


Ethical Ambiguity

by StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms



Series: Gods and Heroes [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Attempted Parenting, Emotions, Henry needs a vacation, I don't know how to tag this, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Iron Man can't exist because nobody is smarter than Henry, a few particularly unsavoury incidents, build a tank, hilarious lack of communication, loose ends, moral dilemmas up the wazoo, not too much detail cos i'm a wuss, superheroes are the best, the past is not in the past, want a tank?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2019-08-21 13:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 34,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16577690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms/pseuds/StormysHealthyCopingMechanisms
Summary: Drunkenly fanfics to avoid obligations of reality.





	1. Genesis

Adam’s new apartment was, incredibly, half the size of his last one. He had to stand against the fridge just to get the whole width of Ronan’s television in eyesight.

It was nicer, though.

A single room, with the tiny cubed bathroom tucked next to the entryway. The bed was behind it, about a foot from the kitchen, so Adam had the option of leaning out of bed in the middle of the night and opening the fridge. Across from the fridge was a narrow high table pressed against the back of the equally narrow sofa, itself barely three feet from the television against the far wall.

Adam had nothing to fill the space with, so it was ideal, down to the single chair at the kitchen table and the skinny black door that led onto the balcony.

Blue had suggested the building, as the new residence of one of her fellow art students. She’d even come with him to the showing, and glowered when the female realtor had referred to her as Adam’s girlfriend.

She hadn’t argued, though, and Adam was sure it had been the only thing earning him enough wholesome appeal for success. He couldn’t imagine what the response to Ronan might have been.

He’d stayed at Monmouth for just over a week, and it hadn’t been awful. Gansey had meticulously avoided mentioning the living situation, and Ronan had adopted the strategy of ignoring Adam altogether unless he started a conversation.

Adam understood it was intended to be helpful.

He was slightly stunned to discover that neither of them seemed able, or willing, to cook or buy food for cooking. Gansey’s fallback seemed to be take-away, or going to Nino’s, which left the Monmouth fridge and pantry full of Ronan’s extraordinarily dubious food choices. Adam did take pride in making pasta-bake one night and watching Gansey receive it with shock and awe.

They’d given him the spare bedroom, from which everyone else seemed to be banned by unspoken law. Even Opal would only toe the threshold at most. It was probably Ronan’s doing, somehow, but Adam never heard him make any reference to it.

Ronan had moved Opal into his room, while Adam was staying, and pretended he would sleep on the couch.

He might even have tried, if Adam hadn’t intervened.

Getting Ronan to sleep was a skill Adam was finding particular satisfaction in. He’d discovered strategies for distracting Ronan, for soothing him. Rubbing his shoulders, or scratching the back of his neck. He knew Ronan liked his hands, and was content to lull himself to sleep just playing with them. He knew Ronan simply liked to be _close_.

He wasn’t used to prolonged periods of inactivity, though, so even when he slept it was rarely for long, and he had always been gone by the time Adam woke up in the morning. Adam wasn’t certain if he was trying to negotiate around Gansey, or trying to avoid occupying Adam’s space.

Adam had still taken the apartment, at Blue’s recommendation, as early as possible. He had an interview with a nearby legal firm for an archivist’s position, thanks to his slightly padded references, and he wasn’t prepared to overstay his welcome at Monmouth. It was Opal’s bedroom, after all, and a painfully low rental contribution Gansey had asked of him. Kindness, but pity, too. It was Adam’s actions, after all, that had lost him his job.

The new apartment suited him nicely, and he enjoyed the privacy it afforded - after school, possibly after work… and if Ronan were to visit.

School had been solidly non-threatening. There was no mention of the internship, although Viridiveste’s collapse remained a source of fascination for a multitude of STEM students who had dreamed of one day obtaining employment in the corporation.

There was no sign of the psychiatrist, yet. Adam was hoping Koehn would forget.

His fatigue had mostly subsided, and there was no fractious mental discomfort in its wake. He felt relatively normal again. Almost completely normal, if he pretended the fight with the superhuman was a passing nightmare rather than a memory.

It had even been a quiet period for the Veil.

Henry was still taking it easy, and Blue was doing minimal vigilante stuff. She explained to Adam that she found it therapeutic; there was nothing like the satisfaction of sending some dirtbag to the police station with a broken nose.

She didn’t disguise her grief, which was a startling relief. She did other things, studying, painting, sculpting, fighting. Visiting Monmouth, arguing with Ronan. But when she remembered, and it brought sadness, she didn’t fight it.

Adam wondered what that was like.

 

 

 

He was several hours into a rabbit warren of statistics about dwarf galaxies when there was a solid thump at the door, pulling his attention from his textbook.

He stood up from the kitchen table, stretching, and smiled as the door rattled impatiently.

It was Ronan, scowling and leaning dramatically on the doorframe. ‘New digs, Parrish?’

Adam stood back to let him in. Ronan had known he was moving, even though Adam hadn’t told him outright, and he’d probably found out where days ago.

He wandered out of the short passage, past the bookshelf against the end of the bed, and grimaced disapprovingly. ‘You managed to find something even smaller.’

Adam shrugged. ‘Bed’s bigger though.’ He gestured to the niche behind the shelves, and watched Ronan’s gaze flicker between the bed and him. ‘Heating and hot water too.’

‘Huh.’ Ronan examined the television, one of the few things Adam had required help with transferring from Monmouth. ‘So you don’t need me to keep you warm.’

‘You have other uses.’

‘Jesus, Parrish, control yourself.’ Ronan raised an eyebrow, glanced over his shoulder.

The size of the apartment was doubly apparent with Ronan’s presence. For only one person, the room and sparse furniture were negotiable, but with Lynch standing in the midst of it, there was no extra space. Even the little grey sofa looked like a child’s chair next to his legs.

Ronan didn’t ask how he’d moved the television, or any of his other things. It was probably an easy (and accurate) assumption that Gansey or Henry had provided the transport, despite Adam’s reluctance.

It had been Henry’s intervention which had expedited the process. He’d arrived unexpectedly in the Veil’s SUV, casually announced that he was “assisting” and spent most of the day helping Adam carry things to the car as rapidly as possible. Adam hadn’t arranged to move into the new apartment so quickly, but Henry had insisted, stressing the importance of efficiency around Adam’s scholastic obligations. Adam had been grateful, then and particularly now, because it was evident Henry had offered help on a strictly transactional basis.

He’d also installed an unnecessarily comprehensive security system on the apartment and the building, wherever he had been able.

He was yet to demand compensation, but he’d made it known Adam’s help was wanted for something.

It didn’t seem possible it would relate to robotics, Cheng’s calling in life, but Adam couldn’t guess what else it would be.

‘Where’s Opal?’

Ronan had navigated around the sofa, sideways to avoid hitting anything, and picked up a book from the armrest. He turned it over boredly before he answered. ‘With Sargent.’

Adam raised his eyebrows, silent. Opal was more fond of Blue than the other two, and Ronan knew it, but it didn’t seem to make it easier for him to leave her alone with anyone. Given only half an opportunity Opal would have followed him anywhere.

Ronan left the book, cast a critical eye over Adam’s homework on the end of the table, and turned his gaze to the gleaming rectangle of light coming in through the balcony door.

It wasn’t a large balcony, but there was a spindly chair and a brick shelf, in case Adam ever (he wouldn’t) felt the need to relax in the outdoors at great height.

Ronan unlocked the door and went out, and Adam followed him, curious.

There was an extra set of keys, for the apartment. The front door spare had gone with Blue, because she was the most sensible person he knew, but he’d kept the balcony spare. It seemed purely logical, to give it to Ronan, but he wasn’t entirely sure how to hand the damn thing over.

Ronan was leaning over the edge. Adam curled his hand over the balcony wall and fought the urge to pull him back.

‘Cute.’ Ronan remarked dryly.

It wasn’t too bad, all things considered. The bricks had been painted white, so despite the shadow cast by the overhanging balcony it remained relatively bright.

This was one of the benefits of the new apartment. It was… cheerful. Hardly decadent, but definitely optimistic about its odds.

Adam had expected Ronan to look slightly out of place here, with the black clothing and the sharpness and the obliterating sense of danger he liked to carry around with him. But he just looked normal, pushing off one foot in an attempt to spy into the balcony below.

Adam watched him sliding forwards and maintained his silence firmly. Ronan could tease all he wanted, but he wouldn’t win.

He slid back suddenly, and pulled a face. ‘Toys.’

‘Kids.’ Adam answered.

Ronan looked sceptical. ‘How do you fit children into one of these?’ He gestured to the window into Adam’s room.

Adam paused before responding. He’d spent half of his childhood in small apartments, but then, Ronan had grown up with the airstrip, and the demands necessitated by his physical power. It couldn’t be easy for him to imagine.

He chose to shrug. ‘Stack them like jenga.’

‘Ah.’ Ronan lifted his chin, smirking.

It was still a strange sensation to remember having a brother while remembering being an only child. The real memories - with his father, and earlier, his mother - had a cold sharpness. Most memories with Noah felt soft, summer-lit, comfortable.

There were a few vague memories with both of them. Greenmantle’s machine had dragged them up, fragmented and dulled with exhaustion, fear and pain. When Noah had first arrived, slow and insubstantial, and Adam had been desperate for a way out, and terrified that he was losing his mind.

Ronan followed him back into the apartment, and Adam handed him the key from the top kitchen drawer.

‘What’s this?’ He examined it with a frown. Adam watched him look up towards the apartment door, and down again with concern.

‘Balcony door.’ Adam advised. ‘Figured it would be more useful.’

Ronan didn’t reply, but after a long pause he pocketed the key.

 

 

 

Adam lay on the sofa, cheerful despite the lack of space. He stretched his legs across Ronan’s lap, tipping his head on the rare occasion the television caught his attention. Ronan slouched down on the cushions, trying to avoid smacking his head against the table behind him. He was running his thumb along the shin bones resting against his chest, and thanking God for the gift of electric heating that had delivered Adam Parrish to this moment in boxer shorts and a sweatshirt.

His other hand was spread on Adam’s stomach, under the shirt, monitoring his warmth and his breathing, but mostly taking advantage of just being allowed.

He liked the apartment, as much as he was able to. Primarily he liked the way its miniature dimensions precipitated so much contact with Parrish. He also liked the way Adam was, here. More at ease with Ronan, at ease with himself.

It had been nearly two weeks since they’d come back, and Adam hadn’t been dragged into anything superhuman or traumatic. He’d been focused almost entirely on school, and he’d been safe, either with Gansey, Cheng, or Sargent.

‘Indiana Jones is ridiculous.’ Adam said suddenly, tilting his head towards the television screen.

‘That’s-’ Ronan glared; ‘- a damn _lie_.’

‘He doesn’t seem to be achieving anything at all.’ Adam pointed out.

‘He’s _clearly_ solving puzzles and preventing cosmic chaos. I thought you’d go for all this history crap?’

‘It’s not history.’ Adam smiled at him sympathetically. ‘Were you an archaeologist adventurer kid, too?’

Ronan grinned and kissed one of his shins.

He hadn’t seen a sign of Adam’s abilities since they’d gone to the airstrip, and wisely nobody was mentioning them. It wasn’t obvious whether it was a result of Adam controlling them, or ignoring them completely. He probably still didn’t want to have any powers, let alone to use them in conflict, which was… an alarmingly large relief. Ronan wasn’t sure he could stomach the thought of Parrish trying his luck as a vigilante when he couldn’t even stay safe as a bystander.

Ronan hadn’t put on the suit since they’d gone away either. He wasn’t sure where to begin, or if he even should.

The Widower was supposed to disappear years ago, when Niall and Aurora had agreed on hiding the powers for the protection of their first child. It wasn’t what Ronan was ever meant to be, but he didn’t know _what_ he was meant to be. Niall had been the first of their kind, and he hadn’t been created from anything but human curiosity.

_Is this power unholy?_

He wondered what Adam was, and immediately forced himself to stop. It wasn’t his business, unless Adam chose to make it his. And it was nothing more than idle curiosity. It wouldn’t change what he did or what he felt.

Adam probably didn’t know. Possibly he didn’t want to.

He moved his ankle, playfully, against Ronan’s chest. ‘Gansey said the city’s famous.’

‘Did he?’ Ronan asked absentmindedly, intent on Adam’s limbs and the wry curve of his mouth.

‘There’s word that someone might send in an Avenger or two.’ Adam continued, watching him carefully. ‘To investigate.’

Distracted though Ronan was, he gradually deciphered Adam’s meaning and scoffed. ‘Investigating isn’t really their thing, is it?’

Adam reflected on the question, a little longer than was really necessary. ‘No.’

‘Publicity.’ Ronan commented snidely. Someone had seen the Viridiveste situation as the PR opportunity it was. It would do the public image of the Avengers good to clean up some minor superhuman messes out in the boondocks, so it didn’t matter whose toes they risked treading on.

Adam smiled, obviously expecting this reaction. ‘Maybe it will help.’

‘Bit fucking late.’ Ronan jerked his chin. ‘We dealt with this on our own. Fucking vultures.’

He wouldn’t have let anyone take his place killing the Demon, but the rest of it? Void, and Chimera, and even Happy fucking Zappy the wunderkind? That should have been someone else’s problem, and it should have been handled a long time ago.

There were others. Holy hell, there were others, and he knew it. And he didn’t want to deal with it. And he didn’t have a part in it, really, anymore.

But still, an Avenger dropping in from on high would just be… irritating.

Adam was laughing at him, he could tell.

‘They’ve got their own shit to deal with.’ He argued roughly. ‘I’m sure nobody will put in an appearance over a few assassins and a mad scientist.’

‘You wouldn’t like to meet any of them?’

The question demanded an eye roll, despite knowing that Adam was teasing him. ‘Fuck no.’

‘No?’

‘No.’ He repeated firmly.

‘Not even Ant-Man?’

‘Pffft.’ The noise hung unforgivably in the air, while Adam smiled, and finally Ronan was forced to shrug. ‘Fine. The tech is cool. But that doesn’t mean-’

‘Not even _Falcon_?’

Ronan floundered, momentarily. This wasn’t an argument he’d win. He regrouped. ‘Don’t you think it’s strange that so many of them are human?’

The question, satisfyingly, seemed to startle Adam. ‘I don’t… think that’s strange. Do you?’

Ronan shrugged. ’I’m not human.’

There was silence, aside from Indiana Jones leaping off something in the background. Ronan wondered what thoughts flickered behind Adam’s unreadable eyes.

_I don’t know what I am._

Adam didn’t know either. He’d acknowledged the fact once. Ronan didn’t care, how could he? He didn’t know if Adam cared.

‘You’d make a good Avenger.’ Adam said finally.

‘You think?’

He started to laugh, Ronan felt it vibrating through his skin before he heard it. ‘No.’

Ronan grinned again. ‘Too many obligations.’ He conceded. ‘I’m not assembling for any crisis before noon. Or on weekends. Or if it’s been a hard night. And no fucking paperwork.’

Adam shook his head, still laughing, and responded in hushed tones; ‘My hero.’


	2. The world spins on

Blue fluffed Gansey’s hair affectionately. It was so pretty. Prettier than her own. Prettier than almost anything she’d ever seen. Quite apart from his prep school hairstyle, Gansey’s hair was just so effortlessly luxurious. Like, cologne advertisement luxurious. Probably even _perfume_ advertisement luxurious. It was like running her fingers through liquid bronze.

She wished she had the energy to resent it, but that ship had sailed a long time ago.

It helped that Gansey was staring at her upside down with endearingly earnest innocence, and all she should see were his eyes.

Doubtlessly, this meant he was guilty of something, and the new leather-bound notebook on his desk had not escaped her notice.

Things had been quiet, overall. Blue had broken up a few assaults, broken up a few noses. There hadn’t been any collapsing buildings or flying trains or energy eaters. Even nice, ordinary, _human_ career criminals seemed to be playing it cool in the wake of the Viridiveste scandal. Possibly because there were calls for a massively increased police presence on the streets, to prevent those crazy jobless scientists from threatening more lives.

Blue didn’t know, and she barely cared. What she worried about was what Gansey was finding to stick in that new book.

Things concerning Ronan, or Adam, or both.

She knew they had to be, because of the way Gansey sounded on the phone sometimes, when he called. Once or twice his voice had held a note of panic, and when she’d asked him what was wrong, he’d denied any urgency, any concern. It was inevitable that his research would uncover things he didn’t want to know. The conspiracy about Caedes, that he still hesitated over taking to Ronan (because if it was true, Ronan surely already knew). The poisoned origins of the Widower, Geminae, the Gray Man, the Demon, even Noah, all products of VVC’s machinations. And the question of what might be the source of Adam’s psychic powers.

There was another rising obsession - that Blue understood, as much as she avoided it - and that was Noah. Gansey didn’t believe he was gone. He’d been waiting, ever since Adam had woken after the encounter with Chimera, for Noah to return.

Blue didn’t want him to be dead, but Adam had been increasingly powerful ever since he’d lost his brother, and there had been no sign of a rematerialisation. And Noah hadn’t been fully… alive. If Gansey had to set his mind on some puzzle or task, Blue would at least have preferred one that didn’t carry so much tragic improbability.

It would be devastating if he found nothing, and there was no indication that there was anything to find.

And if it was possible, what would it take? Noah rewriting another mind? Adam’s? It had been heartbreaking the first time around… she couldn’t imagine watching either of them go through it again. She didn’t want to imagine it.

She waited on asking him. Arguments with Gansey could get out of control easily, and she didn’t want to risk the evening over a suspicion.

It was peaceful, for the moment. Peaceful in the city, and at the Veil. As peaceful as it could get between Gansey’s memories, Ronan’s unfinished business, and whatever the hell was going on with Adam. Her only concern at this point was Henry. The suit hadn’t stopped the horror movie monster that had attacked the Veil, and he’d been working on his tech ever since, hours locked in the basement, or his office.

He’d improved since school had gone back and he’d been around the others, but Blue had seen this before. His suits, his tech, they made him feel untouchable. And since his prototype had failed in battle, he’d been trying to recover that invincibility by making upgrades, making more weapons.

Gansey would have noticed. That might be in his book, too. There just wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Henry’s anxiety would subside, over time.

Gradually, the ache in Blue’s body would fade too. She believed that, because she didn’t have a choice. There were people to save, and a city to protect, and villains to battle.

Grief couldn’t last forever. Grief couldn’t touch the parts of her life that required her uncompromised strength.

She couldn’t let it.

At night, sometimes, she worried. She worried about how wounded Ronan had been, consumed by his grief. She worried about losing herself in the feeling that gnawed at her bones. She worried about what this meant, for those left behind. For Gansey’s safety, and her mother’s, and everyone else’s.

Sometimes she worried that it didn’t hurt enough. Mourning hadn’t affected her the way it had affected Ronan. Did that mean she was cold? She didn’t care enough? Did it mean that there was worse, waiting somewhere, disguised and ready to overwhelm her at the first opportunity?

She looked down at Gansey, methodically describing his school shenanigans, and concern flickered across his features, a passing shadow.

Concern suited him. It was one of the things he often expressed unfiltered. But his most genuine expressions remained thoughtfulness, and a kind of pensive wonderment. One of the wonderful paradoxes of Richard Gansey III was his tendency to experience admiration for the things which most overpowered him. Like Ronan, or Henry. Or Ravel, Longfellow, Da Vinci.

What Gansey recognised as beauty - existentially more than aesthetically - was nothing like the snobbish attributions she’d expected at their first meeting. He cared about things because of their capacity to affect him, not because he was _told_.

 

 

 

The weeks began to blend together. Ronan saw less of Adam, after he picked up work, and even Gansey, filling his time with school and Blue and what seemed dangerously like more research.

He entertained himself and Opal fairly easily, exploring the city and teaching her manoeuvres. They took the occasional overnight sojourn to the airstrip, to Parrish’s, even to Henry’s apartment so Ronan could show her the robots they’d built.

He’d already realised he was delaying the inevitable. His muscles itched. He felt restless. It was school or the suit, or possibly just hardcore parkour… but he’d have to find some way to waste his energy.

Gansey was becoming excessively tense about him not going to school. He returned every day and examined Ronan critically like he expected some languishing disease to have taken hold. Occasionally Ronan had wandered out of his room after a nap and found Gansey somewhere in the apartment, paralysed by uneasiness or worry. It was impossible not to startle him when he was like that, as though he was trapped in some runaway daydream.

He always jumped, and most of the time stared at Ronan like he was an alien, which gave rise to Ronan’s suspicion that Gansey was still digging up information on the Widower.

After he caught Gansey aimlessly staring into space one Thursday afternoon while his phone rang out unacknowledged, Ronan thought he’d try to win back some favour and rescue Gansey’s sanity by letting his ass get dragged to school on Monday.

Despite this clever strategy, he’d barely rolled onto the couch the next morning with a bag of chips in hand before someone cleared their throat behind him.

He levered himself into a sitting position.

‘Ronan?’ Gansey was standing nearby, looking serious. ‘Do me a favour and come to school today?’

It was an odd request. Perhaps not as odd in meaning as it was in delivery. Gansey didn’t look disapproving, or worried, or exasperated… or any one of the innumerable emotions Ronan knew he evoked on a daily basis. He looked quietly, almost _threateningly_ placid.

Ronan shrugged warily, and Gansey’s expression cracked into gratitude.

‘I asked if Opal could stay at Foxway.’ Gansey added. ‘If you’re okay with that?’

Ronan forced himself to shrug again, still cautious, waiting for the tripwire to catch his foot. What day was it? Was he walking into some kind of school-related trap? Were there going to be _exams_?

It wasn’t so bad, though, going to Aglionby. Or he imagined it wouldn’t be. Less tedious, with Adam and Gansey and even Cheng there.

It all depended on what Gansey was trying to do. Stop him from being thrown out, possibly, although he’d never really been at risk of it. Entice him into regular attendance, maybe, but by now Gansey had to know that was impossible.

Nearly eight hours with Adam though. Damn, that was something.

 

 

 

Henry drove Adam to school, as Gansey requested, but he clearly hadn’t explained the sudden change in routine. Parrish expressed mock amazement at Ronan’s arrival in the halls of Aglionby.

He and Cheng had been deep in discussion, but both of them dropped it with the arrival of company.

‘Ronan Lynch, as I live and breathe.’ Adam shoved his locker shut, and leaned against it.

There were few people around them, fewer still who weren’t staring and whispering amongst themselves at a safe, inaudible distance. Ronan curled his lip. ’As long as you live and breathe, Parrish.’

Gansey, wordlessly, glanced between them with round eyes and a barely restrained air of glee. _Shit._

Parrish was already smirking, amused and victorious, and Ronan fought hard to suppress the rush of colour to his face.

‘Sunday then.’ Cheng concluded, with feigned absentmindedness.

‘Tomorrow.’ Adam shook his head. ‘Sooner would be better.’

‘Very well.’

Gansey cheerfully launched a different topic. ‘They’re doing fireworks for the Cornelian feast tonight. I’m going with Blue, if anyone wants to come with us?’

Adam shrugged his bag onto a shoulder. ‘Work.’

‘Right, of course. Ronan?’

‘Misanthropy.’ Ronan answered.

‘Henry?’

‘Sounds first-rate.’ Even Henry, incredibly, was flatlining on enthusiasm. Gansey’s expression of betrayal prompted his immediate remorse. ‘Sincerely, King, I would enjoy it.’

‘Excellent.’ Gansey sighed. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

He didn’t look entirely convinced himself. His nervous jitteriness hadn’t subsided in the least during the drive to school, even in the infamous comfort of the Pig, with Ronan grimly vandalising his tie in the passenger seat.

Ronan attributed it to Cheng’s lack of zeal. Henry had been uncharacteristically morbid since they’d killed the Demon, long after Ronan and Adam had gotten back from the airstrip. Admittedly, given his near-demise from a death-oozing demon-monster the reaction was hardly shocking, but it was _Cheng_. Being emotionally irreproachable was necessarily his wheelhouse.

‘We could take Opal.’ Gansey offered, perking up slightly. ‘Do you think she would enjoy fireworks?’

‘Loud noises and crowds?’ Ronan frowned. ‘Somehow I doubt it.’

 

 

 

He was wrong. Opal had already been coaxed into attendance by Blue and the Foxway women. She wouldn’t stop talking about the “sky-explosions” when Ronan and Gansey picked her up.

Ronan considered going with them. Even with powers of invisibility, she was a child. A small, easily lost, squishable child.

In reality, though, she’d probably be safer with Blue than with him. Blue was an automatic adult. The hair and the outfits were misleading… she was easily the most responsible out of all of them. A peculiar brand of self-reproach invalidated Adam’s claim to the title, and Gansey’s preoccupation with conspiracies and romanticised notions of reality compromised his.

Henry… maybe. If he was his typical even-keeled self. Which he was currently not.

So Ronan was relying on Blue to supervise three children during the celebration. He knew, when Blue showed up in combat boots and a tac-vest, that Opal, at least, would be safe.

‘Remember what you learned?’

Opal silently mimed a few swings loosely, and quirked her pale eyebrow.

Ronan sighed. ‘Punch upwards at the nose and camo. Right, mutant?’

She grumbled muffled agreement.

Gansey promised they wouldn’t be out late. They’d buy some hysterically overpriced festival food, play a few rigged games, and watch the fireworks, and then they would return to Monmouth. He didn’t need to worry, Gansey _assured_ him.

It was undeniably an unsubtle way of pointing out that Ronan would be completely free to go wherever, and _do_ whatever he wanted.

Ronan didn’t bother attempting to exercise the self-restraint required to not cringe dramatically at Gansey’s supportive parenting. He just cringed, wholly committed himself to cringing, and eventually Gansey stopped talking.

Parrish wasn’t finished with work until midnight, anyway. Ronan had time to kill.

Unsurprisingly, Aglionby hadn’t reduced his restlessness. If anything, the strange admixture of Gansey’s concern, Henry’s mood, and Opal’s adventure into public had only aggravated the issue.

He put on the suit.

 

 

 

They didn’t stay long at the feast, as Gansey had promised. Despite her incredible endurance, and her apparently impeccable aim, Opal was tired by before midnight. They brought her back to Monmouth with a stuffed giraffe clenched so tight in her little arms she could have popped it. Ronan wasn’t home, which was a good sign, because Gansey had tried to be perfectly _clear_.

He approved of the relationship. Oh, like nothing else in the world, he approved. He hadn’t _expected_ it. He hadn’t even _known_ about it. But he approved.

Ronan was hopeful, around Adam, and grateful. He was still intense, and frequently troubling… and still the person who had been in the Widower suit. Gansey understood - he _dreaded -_ Ronan’s accountability for everything that he’d done. The people he’d killed. Lives he’d taken.

But Adam had pulled him out of his self-destructive behaviour more effectively than Gansey had ever been able to. It was ironic… or perhaps it was logical, that they would manage for each other what they couldn’t do for themselves.

And it was all Gansey wanted, for both of them to be safe.

There were just too many unknown variables, that was the problem. There were too many unanswered questions and lingering threats.

And there were the nightmares, too, that had him almost constantly on edge.

He wouldn’t have minded, if Ronan had been present for the conversation he needed to have with Blue and Henry. It probably would have been more difficult, but it also could have been helpful for later.

Instead, he outlined his idea to the warrior and the genius, in the half-light spilling from the kitchen, after carrying Opal and her giraffe to her bedroom.

He wouldn’t have had the peacefulness, if Ronan was here. The careful, tolerant consideration of what he was proposing.

When he was finished, he pressed his thumb to his bottom lip, and waited.

The living room was silent.

Blue’s silence was stunned. Taken aback. Possibly shocked.

Henry’s silence was thoughtful. Measuring. Possibly entertained.

Gansey cleared his throat. He looked to Blue; ‘What do you think?’

To Henry he said; ‘Is it possible?’

Henry made a muffled noise which might have been disbelief or amusement. ‘It’s… intriguing.’

Gansey resisted the urge to wilt. ‘But not possible?’

Henry raised his hand to his chin. ‘Speaking from a purely technical standpoint, it is not only possible, but _practical_.’ He paused. ’The problem lies in the sphere of, shall we say, the more ethereal element. And… how to synthesise it appropriately.’

There was another brief silence. Gansey heard Blue take an unsteady breath. ‘We could do that?’ She turned her gaze from Henry to Gansey. ‘We _do_ that.’

‘Parrish’s input on this would be valuable.’ Henry advised gently. ‘Scientifically and experientially.’

‘Not to mention personally.’ Blue interjected.

Gansey shrugged. ‘I’m worried about misleading him.’

‘If this is a possibility, he has a right to know. If it’s going to involve him at some point, he’s going to _want_ to know from the start.’

‘He’s better.’ Gansey replied, quietly. ‘He’s _so_ _much_ better. I don’t want to hurt him.’

A final, lingering silence. Henry watched him, quiet and sympathetic. Blue looked down at her hands, then back up, and nodded. ‘Alright.’


	3. The dead don't walk...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Until they do.

It still felt right.

The Widower suit. The ledge outside Ronan’s bedroom window. Dropping, and recognising the perfect angle to fire a web, feeling it catch on the target, feeling his muscles adjust automatically to the drop and drag of momentum, the rush of the upward swing.

Every time his boots caught the very edge of a rooftop, the narrow sliver atop a billboard, skimmed lazily a few inches off the ground… every time he caught sight of the vast, glittering ocean of city-lights below, above, spinning around him… he remembered what he was made for.

He couldn’t hurt anyone. That was the essential thing to remember.

It was one thing to pursue his parents’ killer like a wounded animal, it was another to betray Gansey’s trust without reason.

After the first time he reflexively slammed a would-be purveyor of GBH into the side of a building, he had to rethink his approach.

He couldn’t _kill_ anyone. That was vital.

Blue hadn’t been wrong in saying the streets were quiet, and Henry hadn’t been remiss in taking a break from super-cop duties. Ronan barely found anyone jaywalking (that was a lie, downtown was a massive mess of stumbling bodies, especially between clubs, raves, bars, basement dens and limousines - but it was Friday night).

He knew where to go, though. He remembered where the shiny-shoed wiseguys cracked heads together, where bikers tattooed each other in garages, where businessmen did lines of coke off the little tables in strip joints.

He went for the scrapyards, where gangbangers crushed cars with blood stains in the trunks, and handed out heroin from duffel bags, and casually assembled machine guns in the barren, water stained offices.

There were cranes, and haulers, and stacks of junk, and Ronan had always liked staking out places like this, veritable playgrounds. He could be subtle, when the need arose, and he had plenty of cover.

Not killing them was a new challenge to navigate. He couldn’t just hope to knock them out with a rough blow (which would more than likely kill them, if he didn’t restrain enough of his strength). But he had experience using the webs as restraints, stringing up traps and nets, holding down the fort until the reinforcements arrived. And the police would have to be summoned, early enough so that the webs didn’t dissolve in the dew, but not so early that there was a threat to their safety from anyone left upright and armed.

Troublingly, the weapons and drugs would have to remain intact, if anyone was to have a chance of putting the targets in prison. Ronan disliked that the most. He didn’t trust anyone outside of the Veil, and local law enforcement were hardly paragons of virtue. Corruption had been rife in the city since Niall’s time, and worsened with an influx of dubious politicians and amoral authorities after he had gone. Yes, it was a haven for those rejected from polite society, like Ronan, but it was also a breeding ground for career criminality and violence in the pursuit of success.

It didn’t matter. If he managed to scour even a fraction of that population from the city he would have justified his decision to wear the suit.

Ronan would have fit in around the scrapyards, if he hadn’t been wearing the suit. The shaved hair, shadowed expression, and constant hunt for for a fight were all common characteristics of the figures around here.

His initial dispatch was a loner watching the back edge of the yard. It was too risky to hide him in one of the vehicles, in case someone unknowingly tried to crush it or drive it out. It wasn’t ideal to leave him in the open, even pinned, in case someone stumbled across him.

Ronan left him bundled up on top of the nearby skeleton of a bus, and moved on.

There were several figures aimlessly occupying the stretch of drive between the front gate and the warehouse, strolling with M16s, or pistols tucked into the back of their jeans. This required finesse, a few bursts of web over the mouth to stop any of them calling out (and to draw their hands, panicked, to their faces) and then some swift roundhouses, a few blows to the torso, and the casual sweeping of their legs from underneath them.

Ronan left them stranded, swaddled up in an amorphous blob of web, and carefully made his way to the warehouse.

There was a path up the wall, swathed in shadow, he followed easily. No overhead windows here, barely any windows at all. One of the roller doors was open, on the cargo side of the small building (the other side was set up as a small office) and Ronan could hear voices drifting out, unrestrained, lifted on a breeze.

They always thought they were invincible, somehow. Like they had nothing to fear from a city full of vigilantes, science experiments and psychic crimestoppers. It was probably a refreshingly peaceful, if ignorant way to live.

Ronan crouched on the edge of the roof, directly above the open door. There might have been more people in the office, but he could only distinguish four, perhaps five voices from inside the cargo bay. The junk came as teeteringly close to the building as it came to the edges of the road. Cars, sometimes stacked, sometimes leaning precariously on wheel rims, windowless or buckled from impact. Old vans, stripped of their sliding and back doors, eerily threatening. Buses, with all the seats torn out, and indistinct, repulsive marks along the sides and on the windows.

There was the silent crane, and the motionless magnet, and the pit, a few yards over from the warehouse.

Scrapyards made great money through legitimate business. The city was full of crap waiting to be crushed.

But it was twice as easy again to supplement the income with stolen goods, drug trafficking, and arms dealing. The lot didn’t have to be big, because there was an endless variety of places to hide gear. There was plenty of room for gang members to loiter, smoke, and test weaponry in the privacy afforded by the noise and violence of the crane.

Ronan would have figured on every scrapyard in the city running something shady on the side, if not as the main enterprise.

He webbed a car, something unpleasantly puce-coloured and delicately balanced above a crumpled Pontiac, and pulled, leveraging his weight against the roof.

It screeched sideways, grinding across metal until half the car was hanging in midair, and fell to the ground, warping savagely and blocking part of the road.

The charming sound of raised voices from inside rewarded Ronan’s efforts.

Nobody wanted to be the first one out the door, so perhaps he’d been hasty in assuming their ignorance ran so deep, but eventually there was the rapid movement of shadows, and a few gun barrels were first to enter his field of view.

Then arms, shoulders, and the backs of necks.

The Widower… Ronan could have dropped down in the middle of them and demolished them with impunity.

But there was satisfaction in precision.

He webbed a couple of faces, and landed low.

He levelled one with a swift kick to the knee, another he shoved into the wall and pinned there with web.

A gun went off, close enough to deafen him. Ronan ducked and kicked back, caught someone’s shoulder harder than he intended and heard them topple over. There was a longer barrel ahead of him, pointing in the wrong direction, but he snatched for it anyway, missed by inches. His head was ringing, twisting the world.

Someone was straightening up, unsteadily, and there were two more figures moving. He separated them, dragging one off his feet with webs to the knees and lunging for the other, pushing him far enough back into shadow to trap him against one of the car wrecks. Dangerous, still, to leave him there, but necessary. Ronan would come back to move him.

He had to throw a web, let it snatch him off his feet to avoid a sputter of gunfire, and vaguely wondered if the bullets might have struck his other quarry, but then he was landing, rolling forward, catching the smooth metal of a submachine gun and wrenching it forward.

With the other hand he caught enough shirt to shove backwards. The gun hit the ground, bounced uselessly, and Ronan twisted the unarmed figure into a loose headlock.

There was one more, he thought he could see ahead, weaving through darkness. Possibly others would show up, lured by the gunshots.

Ronan dropped the figure in his grip, settled for rolling him into a tangled mess on the ground, and went for the last one.

He was sly, sticking to the dark and headed for cover in the narrow passages between vehicles. Ronan’s hearing was returning, and he used sound to follow, scraping past bent metal and ripped upholstery and shattered glass.

There was something, that flickered out of the corner of his eyes, a pale wraith between gutted cars and truck carcasses.

He knew it, instinctively. He felt the gut-rush of adrenaline and loathing.

_Kavinsky_.

Ronan faltered automatically, and something struck the side of his head.

It was probably a gun, judging by the glass edged pain that radiated through his skull, but he recovered himself and slammed his palm into his opponent’s larynx.

It sent the asshole sprawling, conscious but gasping for breath, and Ronan spun around.

Kavinsky was still there, slouching unconcerned against the wreck of a Buick. He was smoking something, possibly a joint.

He lifted his chin insolently. ‘Lynch.’

Ronan didn’t speak. He couldn’t remember how.

‘You killed me over Parrish.’ Kavinsky observed, relaxed and grinning. ‘I didn’t expect that.’

His clothing was ruffled - not the clothes he’d died in - and his hair was a disinterested wave, and there was no sign of the mask, or a weapon. He looked completely normal. Unmarked.

_It’s a nightmare_. God, please, let it be a nightmare.

‘You were insane.’ Ronan found his voice, barely. ‘You had to die.’

Was that true? He’d never been sure. He’d done it to protect Adam, Gansey, his brothers. Not the city. Not the people. Afterwards he hadn’t been certain it was the right choice, a _human_ choice.

‘You fucking _liar_. I bet he couldn’t wait to reward you for the heroic rescue.’

Disbelief pulled laughter out of Ronan, flat and deranged, echoing down the alley. ‘Are you jealous?’

_He was dead. He was dead. He was dead._

_This was a nightmare, nightmare, nightmare._

Ronan’s heart wasn’t beating.

‘Of that pathetic animal?’ Kavinsky snorted. ‘Your white trash rent-boy?’

Ronan flinched, and drew back to lunge. He knew it was pointless, but he wanted so badly to sink a fist into Kavinsky’s face.

‘That’s how I’ll remember him.’ Kavinsky continued smugly, pushing off the car and straightening up, making himself a bigger, better target. ‘Terrified.’

Ronan circled, jaw tight, urgently searching for an angle.

‘Alone.’ Kavinsky added. ‘Helpless.’

Ronan couldn’t fight him. Kavinsky’s power, intact, was unstoppable without the energy drains. _If_ Ronan could get away from him, _if_ Ronan could reach the others, Kavinsky still knew their plan, knew how to avoid the fate he had supposedly already suffered.

Most importantly, he’d _been_ dead.

‘I’m going to kill him, Lynch.’ Kavinsky dropped the end of the joint, crushed it with his heel. Ronan heard it sizzle and fade. ‘I’m gonna cut him into pieces.’

 

 

 

Adam had finally acquired a laptop, some junky mess he’d built with Henry’s help. He knew Henry probably could have cleaned it up, and Ronan would have been able to modify it, given half a chance, but he didn’t mind its clumsy exterior and constantly humming fan. It worked, albeit slowly, it was another functional, helpful machine that he’d created… and this one wasn’t likely to be confiscated by the police.

Nevertheless, at times he regretted the innovation.

There was an email waiting for him when he got home after work.

It was short, and to the point. The psychiatrist had been contacted, and he had an appointment. On a Friday, within school hours, but he would be allowed certain privileges with regard to his classes. He couldn’t alter the appointment date or time. Attendance wasn’t optional.

It wasn’t his first visit to a psychiatrist, and uneasiness was already setting in. He despised the games he knew they played, the tricks and manipulations. It seemed harmless - they were “helping” - but it never was. They hadn’t cared then, and they couldn’t imagine now the damage it would cause if he opened his mouth.

He knew how to shut his mind off from it, though. It was one of the things he excelled at doing. If he could hide the truth as a child, he could hide the truth now, without letting facts or unstable psychic abilities bleed out through the cracks.

He was still sitting at the table, fingers curled into fists over the keyboard, when he heard the thud from the balcony.

It was Ronan, inevitably, but that didn’t stop him from moving behind the cover of the fridge, and watching the door.

Ronan didn’t knock before he came in, unusual even for him, and the Widower suit caught Adam off guard. It was so dark, it was like watching a shadow spill through the doorway and into the room.

Adam’s stomach twisted, not uncomfortably. There was still an image of the Widower that had never been fully meshed with Ronan in Adam’s mind. There was still something exhilarating about the vigilante’s presence.

He tried to say Ronan’s name, but he didn’t move, didn’t speak.

It was barely seconds before Ronan saw him, but it felt like an age before the mask tipped, and blank silver eyes rested on Adam’s face.

He took a breath, and wished Ronan would say something.

The distorted voice wasn’t Ronan’s, the Widower wasn’t Ronan, but Adam knew he would recognise him, if Ronan would just _speak_.

He pulled off the mask.

It _was_ Ronan, as Adam had known it had to be. He was burning, lit with something that had been muted by time. _Fear_.

‘Parrish.’ He said.

Adam barely realised he’d moved before they’d collided. The suit was impossibly dense, impenetrable, so he caught Ronan’s face instead, reassured himself with the familiarity of his skin and his jaw and his mouth.

He knew the expression, from Ronan, from the mirror.

He pushed Ronan against the bench, and heard his head smack the overhead cabinet.

‘Sorry…’

The suit worked exactly as it was designed to work. It was like clutching at armoured muscle, like an effortless extension of Ronan’s own skin, but it was also _everywhere_ and singularly irritating.

Ronan stepped forward to escape the cabinets, and Adam hit the edge of the table, tilting back unsteadily with Ronan’s weight.

He couldn’t focus long enough to find the pattern on the suit that would get rid of it, and Ronan was preoccupied with a handful of his sweater and chasing his mouth.

The suit made Ronan’s palm rough, curved around the back of Adam’s neck, and the thumb pressed to his jaw. But he was Ronan, breathless and warm and mumbling.

‘How’s work?’

‘Huh, good. Crime?’

‘Hm, same as ever.’

The psychiatrist… maybe Adam wouldn’t tell him. It would only complicate things.

‘Opal…?’

‘With Blue.’ And Gansey and Henry, presumably… but, it was late. Adam had lost track of time. ‘Tomorrow?’

_Tomorrow was;_ ‘Going to Henry’s, at some point. Diagnostics.’

Another thing he needed to keep to himself.

The suit had defeated him. He couldn’t even find Ronan’s neck, just armoured fibre. He’d never gotten around to asking Ronan what it was made from. The material, as with the webs, he knew had to be Ronan’s doing. The visual and auditory technology were undoubtedly Henry’s.

The webshooters were Ronan’s though. Adam let his hands drift to Ronan’s wrists, and the familiar metal plating along his forearms, launcher and magazine. They were practical, but just pretty enough to be his work, made with loving attentiveness.

Ronan was just leaning on him, now, breathing gently into his hair. ‘It’s late.’

What could have scared him? Fighting again? Or… killing?

‘Want something to eat?’

There were snacks in the apartment, specifically for Ronan’s visits. They were Ronan-Opal-Chainsaw snacks. And there was really no point asking… the answer was always yes.

‘How’d it go?’ Adam asked cautiously, pulling the pantry door open.

Ronan shrugged, looking at Adam’s bare feet with more interest than was reasonable.

The return to the suit hadn’t been inevitable. Adam had considered it more likely that he’d bury the thing and start fresh with something new. The Widower’s reputation was formidable. He would never escape it, dressed like that.

But it was still difficult to say how much time Ronan had spent as the Widower rather than Ronan over the past couple of years. He’d changed his identity instead of merely disguising it. And perhaps that was permanent.

It didn’t bother Adam. At least, he didn’t think so. It made him feel strange, looking at Ronan in the suit… But looking at Ronan asleep made him feel similarly odd. Possibly discomfort at the extra divide between them.

‘I didn’t kill anyone.’ Ronan reported, accepting a pop-tart. He frowned. ‘I think.’

‘What did you do to them?’

‘I just…’ He gestured. Crumbs flew everywhere. ‘Detained them.’

Adam tried not to smirk. ‘Violently?’

‘Oh, no.’ Ronan answered indignantly. ‘I made them little gift baskets.’

‘Adorable.’

‘It’s a pain in the ass, trying to keep them breathing and stop them running away.’ He pointed out grimly. ‘It’s counter-intuitive.’

Adam smiled at him. ‘Maybe you could just maim them a bit.’

‘Yeah.’ Ronan shoved another pop-tart into his mouth. ‘Sounds good.’


	4. Cue the nerd convention

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was... mean.

Adam slept in slacks and a sweater, under the blankets, with Ronan’s arm hooked across his stomach.

Ronan could feel the faint throb of his heartbeat through his abdomen, and the rise and fall of his chest. The apartment was noisy, even in the early hours of the morning, as other student residents returned to the building from long nights of working or partying. The fridge clicked and whirred at irregular intervals, determined to irritate.

It hadn’t snowed for nearly two weeks and even the street outside was noisy, relative to the first, snow muffled nights Ronan had stayed here.

Kavinsky hadn’t been real. It was improbable, even with the shit that Ronan had seen recently, that he could have survived, let alone unscratched.

It was not improbable that Ronan would have a momentary lapse of sanity at a crucial moment during a fight, especially after a considerable blow to the head.

He hated his brain. He hated the memory of Kavinsky.

He hated the desperate desire to remain here, despite knowing it was almost definitely a hallucination.

Adam stirred, and pushed aside the arm Ronan had laid across his stomach. He mumbled a complaint and kicked free of both his slacks and most of the blanket, before allowing Ronan to reclaim his position nearby.

‘You’re not sleeping.’ He murmured.

Ronan stayed silent, and Adam was gone again almost immediately, perfectly peaceful.

He fidgeted eventually, and Ronan knew to withdraw his arm before the heat provoked nightmares. He lay on his side, instead, inspecting the length of the apartment and the clouded balcony windows. This wasn’t the first time it had troubled him, that Adam lived alone.

Greenmantle was still alive. Geminae had taken a swing at Adam before and missed, and he wasn’t likely to be as careless next time. The lightning-kid had been a curveball, and there could be others. The machine had been designed to make others, hadn’t it?

Sure, Adam had protection. But it was unpredictable, and Ronan… 

It didn’t matter, because Adam didn’t like being smothered.

The temperature dropped further, as the morning progressed. The sky outside lightened, and the room acquired the silent crispness peculiar to pre-dawn. Everything in the room was being cast into a gray fog.

Adam rolled over, seeking the blankets and then Ronan.

He folded his arms across the width of Ronan’s chest. ‘Time is it?’

‘Too early.’ Five am. Parrish’s internal clock was impeccable.

He pushed his face into Ronan’s neck, with the singleminded intention of warming his nose up, and tangled his legs between Ronan’s.

The proximity was ridiculous, but Adam was obligingly back to sleep within seconds. His breath snaked down Ronan’s neck, over his shoulder and collarbone. This degree of contact was a practicality, for Parrish, but Ronan’s obsession.

He didn’t stir again until the sun came up, and Ronan had to abandon the bed for the bathroom.

The motion didn’t seem to wake him, but when Ronan returned he found Adam occupying his spot, pursuing the warmth he’d left behind.

He rubbed his thumb against the corner of Adam’s mouth until he earned a remorseless smirk. ‘Move over.’

‘No.’

‘Move your ass.’

Parrish didn’t deign to answer, so Ronan climbed over him.

He’d have to leave, soon, to get Opal, in case Gansey had plans for today. And Adam was going to be nerding it up with Cheng, which was a fun thing to avoid. Then there would be more work, more school, more studying, and Ronan wouldn’t see him for several days, and that would be… fine.

He wouldn’t tell Adam about Kavinsky. The longer he’d considered it, the worse an idea it seemed. Everything at the airstrip had been so extreme, and everything since so casual, that suddenly dropping a “hallucination about a murderous psychopath who threatened to kill you” was like carpet bombing any stability they had.

There was no point, anyway. Kavinsky was dead.

 

 

 

Whatever had unsettled him, Ronan didn’t consider it worth sharing. He ate breakfast (more pop-tarts), and watched cartoons on his television, and grumbled cheerfully about Henry Cheng’s existence.

He didn’t ask why Adam was going to see Henry, or if he was busy later, or pretty much anything else. Adam suspected that Ronan had a well-established sense of privacy… despite his complete lack of respect for other boundaries.

Everything he did, he did in briefs, because the suit was hardly lounge-wear. It wasn’t awful to watch him slouch around almost-naked, but it wasn’t exactly conducive to a general feeling of relaxation, either. And it made Adam feel chilly.

Still, Adam didn’t encourage him to get dressed, or to leave. They spent less time together, these days. It was part of the reason seeing him at school had reduced Adam’s cognitive capacity by a good 15% and a better part of the reason he’d considered not sleeping at all the previous night.

But he still had to get to Henry’s, at some point, and Ronan, balancing idly on one foot in the kitchen while intently absorbed in Star Wars: Clone Wars and his sixth pop tart, had to return to Opal.

Seeing Ronan put on the suit, in daylight, still chewing, still watching the tv, was surreal… but deeply amusing. Adam had no clue where he was keeping the balcony key. He put the pop tart packet in the trash, eyes on the television. He opened the balcony door, still transfixed. He uncrumpled the mask and pulled it over his head, in absurdly casual fashion, and waited for the show to finish before he looked across to Adam.

‘Have fun at the nerd convention, Parrish.’

Adam gave him the finger. Ronan returned the gesture. He pulled the door shut behind himself, but through the glass panes Adam saw him climb onto the balcony wall.

Jesus, that would never stop being terrifying.

He disappeared from sight.

 

 

 

Someone thumped on the hall door, and Adam twisted away from his work. He was royally screwed if someone had seen Ronan launching out from his balcony.

He left his laptop on the table and strode over to open the door.

The air in his lungs vanished, leaving a sudden aching emptiness. He lost the capacity to breathe in an instant.

A neighbour wasn’t standing accusing on the doorstep, but Adam’s father was. 

Adam flattened himself against the wall alongside the door, searching for oxygen, or his voice, finding neither.

The figure moved past Adam’s lowered gaze, unspeaking, but he even smelled like Robert Parrish. Cigarettes and the inside of a bar. 

Adam might have thrown up, if he’d had the faintest ability to move or function. He’d let him in, let him straight into the apartment. Adam was dead.

‘Well.’ His father said flatly. ‘Don’t just stand there.’

He could have cried, but it only would’ve made things worse. The old fear was climbing his throat, settling in his bones, like it had never faded. He hated himself for it.

He closed the door.

His father picked up one of the library books from the shelf at the foot of the bed, examined it with disgust and tossed it aside.

‘So this is it?’

Adam hung back, in the shadows of the hall, holding his arms across his stomach.

‘This is what you’ve done for yourself.’ Robert lifted the laptop and dropped it again, making Adam flinch. ‘Showy new apartment, showy new job. Where was this effort before, huh? You never did fuck-all to help me with anything.’

He glanced at Adam, pausing for a response he knew wouldn’t come.

‘Always a selfish piece of shit, just like your mother. I shoulda known you wanted to go to that school so you could whore around for attention and get some rich prick to make use of you while paying the rent.’ He gestured to the television scornfully.

The nausea worsened. Adam leaned on the wall. He was only grateful, god, he was so grateful Ronan had left. He would have killed Robert, hearing this, and Adam wouldn’t have been able to look him in the eye even if he didn’t.

Adam had been an idiot. He’d been such an idiot. Noah had never said his father was dead. Noah had never explained what had happened. Adam had just assumed, because he didn’t want to think about it, because it was easier not to think about it… and he’d earned this as a result.

Where had Robert Parrish been, then? And what would he do now? Adam had stopped paying for the other apartment, had taken all the remaining possessions.

‘You’re not going to make me welcome?’ Robert opened the fridge door, sniffed at the contents, and slammed it shut. ‘You’re not gonna open your damn mouth?’

_No. Maybe never again._

He wouldn’t manage, with his father here. He wouldn’t be able to hide it from Ronan, or Blue. He wouldn’t be able to get anywhere except work and school, and maybe not even those, if his dad acted true to form.

He didn’t have Noah to coax him up off the floor.

His father sneered at the balcony door, at the secondhand chest of drawers tucked under the window, at the pot plant Blue had given Adam, and he’d taken care to position in the best location for maximum sunlight.

_Don’t touch it, please don’t touch it._

Henry would be expecting him. He’d have to hide this from Henry.

He’d have to hide it from the psychiatrist.

From _Ronan_.

His slow, critical examination of the apartment completed, Robert Parrish drew closer, until Adam could identify the familiar scars on his chin, the touch of gray to the hair around his temples, and the deep blue eyes Adam had so unwillingly inherited.

‘You’ve got nothing to say.’ He observed, unsurprised, unimpressed. The physical threat of him was paralysing. Adam couldn’t hold eye contact with him for longer than a second… he stared at the floor instead. ‘I _raised_ you. But turn my back for one minute and you’ve _fucked off_.’

His volume lifted. Adam expected a blow, and it took every ounce of his self-control not to flinch.

He sighed instead, and Adam heard and _felt_ it, and then he’d moved past, gripped the door handle, opened it to the hall.

He turned back.

‘You _owe_ me, Adam. Don’t fucking forget it.’

The door slammed shut. The apartment was silent.

Adam pressed his back harder to the wall, and tried to stop feeling like he was dying.

 

 

 

It took longer for the shaking to subside than Adam remembered. He couldn’t even make it further into the apartment. He stayed in the hall, crouched on the floor, trying to pull himself together.

He was later to Henry’s then he’d wanted… not that Henry remarked on it. He was still shivering, but Henry didn’t comment on that either.

He still felt sick, and to that Henry responded, with sparkling water and crackers and dip and zero verbal acknowledgement. Adam drank, and tried to eat, and eventually he slept over. It was easier than finding his way home in the evening.

Henry’s apartment was more like a house. It was more than possible he’d had the place built - or that his mother had the place built - specifically for him. It had several storeys, and was wedged into one of the city’s most prestigious and highly secure (probably courtesy of Henry) apartment complexes.

Visitors needed to be cleared through facial and voice recognition at the gate, and then find their path through a maze of nearly identical, perfectly kept buildings with manicured trees and a premium on privacy.

‘The neighbours don’t notice your work?’ Adam had asked, the first time he’d visited. Henry had shrugged.

‘They are not inclined to be so attentive.’ He’d explained. ‘Or if they are, they merely grasp the relative benefit to themselves.’

‘It is beneficial to live in proximity to others.’ Henry added. ‘An extra element of anonymity. And I enjoy their… activities.’

Occasionally he would be distracted by residents passing by on the avenue below his windows, walking tiny coiffed dogs or chatting over the hood of some Jaguar or Mercedes. Adam had wondered once if the distance between him and his family made him wistful, but he thought it would be blunt to ask.

His living quarters and his workshop were typically inextricably entwined, although that was unsurprisingly reduced upon this visit. Adam appreciated the sparse but luxurious furniture, muted colours, and walls lined with workbenches.

Henry rarely kept anything in his space that wasn’t relevant to his work, and the emptiness of the rooms were a significant enough indication of what troubled him.

Still, they didn’t discuss much.

Adam couldn’t think about the morning, not without reflexive fear. He examined what Henry put in front of him, and the suits, new and duplicates of the ones stored at Foxway, panels and segments of prototypes and concepts. He examined Henry’s computers, hardware, software. He even examined the two cars, sitting in the basement, the Fisker and a black SUV Henry used to move parts.

Robert Parrish had seemed real. Real, and exactly as he had been.

He’d picked his way through Adam’s apartment, his belongings. He’d been _present_.

But Adam had hallucinated before.

And his father had found him, somehow. Had known about Aglionby, and even about Ronan. There was nobody he could have heard it from, nobody who would have known and told him.

That was inconsequential, in the long run. He hadn’t demanded anything, that was the incongruous part, and he’d _left_ , and left Adam unscathed.

This was definitely something to hide from the psychiatrist.


	5. The Fabled Tragicomedy of Love

A few days passed, then the rest of the week. Adam was absent, buried under an avalanche of studying and work and, apparently, projects with Henry Cheng.

Ronan chose the suit over school, even over Gansey, who was increasingly concerned about Ronan’s safety. He’d started calling during school to make sure Ronan was still at home, despite the unlikelihood of Ronan fighting crime in broad daylight.

There were no reports of murder in the news, so Ronan decided his dismay was simply the result of transferred anxiety about Henry, who hadn’t improved.

Possibly Adam was helping Cheng build a new suit, or a bunker, or something else to stave off the existential dread that seemed to have engulfed him. He was yet to return to the suit in order to peruse the streets or the globe for a fight. The Foxway women’s warnings went unacknowledged, except by Blue.

Ronan had other things to think about.

Kavinsky, primarily, who haunted his night time activities. Every time Ronan went out, Kavinsky appeared, a nightmare thrown forth somehow by Ronan’s subconscious. He considered the possibility his brain was trying to warn him away from the Widower, but he wanted to wear the suit too much to stop.

It was impossible to see Kavinsky (and it was always him, never Void) and not be affected by the grim reality of him, down to every detestable detail… but when he vanished again, either walking away or getting left behind when Ronan split, there was the dawning clarity that he couldn’t be real. It made no sense, and he never _acted_. He talked, and he laughed, and he moved, but he never left a mark on anything.

Instead of guilt, Ronan just rediscovered the depths of his hatred. Kavinsky, captured in detail by his own traitorous memory, was still unequivocally a dickhead.

Sheer irritation gradually made it easier to tell him to go fuck himself, or throw things that he nimbly dodged, even if Ronan couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that _this time it could be real_.

He hadn’t mentioned it to Gansey, yet. It was impossible to find an opportune moment to introduce the subject, and Ronan wasn’t certain about adding to Gansey’s worries when he was already so highly strung.

He hadn’t mentioned it to Adam, either, but he hadn’t _seen_ Adam. He’d made the mistake of texting only once, and the ensuing impatience for an answer had rapidly driven him to throw the phone out a window. Parrish had exams, at some point soon, and Ronan wasn’t stupid enough to get in his way.

He could have gone to school, should have gone to school, but there was still Opal… and even the residents of Foxway couldn’t be full-time childminders.

It didn’t stop him from taking Opal to visit Blue, when he knew she wouldn’t be at school or a gallery, just so he had something to do all day.

Chainsaw sat on Opal’s shoulder, distractingly huge next to her tiny, owl-eyed face, earning coos of appreciation from various women encountered on the way into the building. She was well known, and comfortable here. Ronan, on the other hand, hastily moved on.

Sargent wasn’t in the living room, or Henry’s office, or the medical lab downstairs. Reluctantly, Ronan navigated to her bedroom.

He hadn’t knocked - didn’t need to in order to hear that she was in there - but he knew that she was crying.

_Ah, hell._

He walked into the door, literally, collided with it as loudly as possible, and heard a muffled sigh from inside.

‘Not now, Lynch!’

‘Training day, Sargent, move your ass.’

‘Give me a _minute_!’

‘Don’t have a minute.’ Ronan answered, jostling the door. ‘Dying of old age out here.’

Blue yanked the door open, and glared at him. She didn’t bother to disguise her reddened eyes. Or her irritation. ‘Congratulations, you’re still an asshole. Are you done?’

Opal came skidding down the hall, chased by an airborne Chainsaw.

‘Sargent.’ Ronan said airily, pressing his hand to his heart in mock sympathy. ‘Are you crying over Cheng’s disloyalty?’

She smirked; ‘It’s your boyfriend he’s cheating with, Lynch.’

‘It’s true.’ Ronan feigned despair. ‘I can’t compete with that level of nerd.’

‘Now that-’ Blue commented snidely; ‘-I believe.’

‘Downstairs.’ Ronan announced. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Yes, Lynch.’ She shoved him, ineffectively. ‘I couldn’t be more willing to beat you into the ground.’

 

 

 

They trained in the basement, after Ronan had complained about the lack of room amongst Henry’s junk and Blue had found Opal and Chainsaw treats.

They’d fought together before, and mucked around, but never trained opposing one another. It was smarter for Blue to keep him at a distance, with her shields, but she’d already grasped his purpose, and she permitted him to engage at close quarters.

She was… _human_. Or, Ronan thought she was. He’d never thought to question it. Maura was human, just psychic, but perhaps Vine wasn’t… which would make Blue half-human, like Ronan.

She was strong, but not like him. She was fast, too, and well-trained in hand-to-hand combat despite her powers. She fought more smoothly than most of Ronan’s usual opponents, and kept to mainly defensive manoeuvres. Her offensive strikes were sly, and Ronan admired that.

Most significantly, she was small, and skilled, and a perfect example for Opal.

They sparred for a few rounds, Sargent throwing him around easily until she paused, grinning. ‘You pulling your punches for me, Lynch?’

‘I would _never_.’

‘Alright, Spidey, show me what you’ve got.’ She summoned a shield, round and blue, on each arm. ‘Aside from limbs like spaghetti.’

‘Ha.’

Sargent was vicious, and powerful. Ronan didn’t risk moderating his attacks. Her capacity to produce multiple independent forcefields had his speed and strength entirely outmatched. He was relying on dodging, and reflexes, and he still caught a shield to the chest.

The blow sent him sprawling, momentarily stunned, and an instant later Blue appeared, leaning over him. ‘Shit, sorry.’

He groaned, and let Blue pull him into a sitting position. ‘I would accuse you of harbouring some aggression, Sargent, but I think that’s been established.’

‘I mean.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘You deserved it.’

‘Uh-huh.’ He climbed to his feet, ignoring Opal’s gleeful clapping. ‘We’ve established that, too.’

‘Do you want to go again?’

‘I think I’m beat.’ Chainsaw fluttered overhead, landed on Ronan’s shoulder, and inspected the damage.

She snorted, disbelieving. ‘Accepting defeat? That’s almost… sensible.’

‘Don’t dishonour me.’

‘Maybe you’re the most sensible one of all of us.’ She suggested. ‘Secretly.’

‘Sargent.’ Ronan grimaced at one of his bruises beginning to heal. ‘You’re the only sensible person we know.’

‘Yeah. Maybe.’

 _Doubt?_ Ronan frowned at her.

‘I’m a teenage artist who fights crime with her friends, Ronan.’

‘Sounds healthy.’ Ronan shrugged. ‘I’m not seeing a problem.’

‘I am.’ She’d wandered over to the door, the path to Henry’s garage. ‘Let me show you something.’

Ronan gestured for Opal, and followed Blue down the corridor. Henry’s junk had encroached upon the passage, too, piled against the walls. It was unlike Cheng to be so disorganised, but it was nothing compared with the contents of the garage. His materials, half-finished tech, untouched armour, all of it balanced into stacks, shovelled into black crates, pushed into half-closed lockers.

‘Jesus.’ Ronan stopped, and Opal’s fingers found the back of his jeans, pulling for permission to explore. He tapped her head absentmindedly. ‘He’s doing great, huh?’

‘Aren’t we all?’ Blue sighed, prodding a metal faceplate. ‘I hope whatever they’re working on is worth it.’

‘He’s hoarding all this crap for that?’

She scoffed. ‘No, Lynch, he’s discarding all this for that.’

He squinted at her.

‘He dragged all this stuff down here from home, for some reason. Making space, I guess.’

‘And you don’t know _what_ it is?’

‘And Adam didn’t tell _you_?’

He tipped his head. _Touché_. ‘Parrish doesn’t tell me anything. Doesn’t Gansey know?’

‘Not that he’s told me. But _something’s_ up with him.’ She eyed Ronan accusingly. ‘He’s been calling all hours of the night. I figure he’s worried about you.’

Ronan started formulating an excuse, _any excuse_ , but Blue was quick to interrupt.

‘I don’t think you should stop, Lynch. And I think you made the right call. Without you, Greenmantle would still be running the city, and Henry and I would be still be blind to it.’

Ronan curled his fingers into fists and stared firmly at Opal as she dug through one of Henry’s crates.

‘I’m not naive. I’m not _happy_ about what happened. But nobody was to blame, except the demonic bitch you killed.’ She sighed bitterly. ‘Henry will get his head together eventually, and Gansey will stop panicking, and we’ll move on. Don’t make it worse for yourself.’

‘And you?’ Ronan heard the scorn in his own voice, and hated it. _Persephone died because he pursued and provoked the Demon_.

‘I’ll do what we do.’ She shrugged, the grief crushed into invisibility. ‘I’ll survive.’

Opal disturbed something on the far side of the garage, and there was the clatter of tumbling metal. Ronan swiftly departed to extract her.

 

 

 

He heard Adam before he’d even made it off the staircase. He was in the hall, his backpack bumping against his leg, and then the key was in the lock, and the door was swinging open.

He would have heard the television before anything, and the too-often-shrill voices of the animated characters on the screen. That was probably why he hesitated in the doorway, before slowly stepping inside.

‘Ronan.’ He wasn’t visible from the sofa, which meant he was still at the shadowy end of the tiny hall. ‘Ronan?’

Responding was unnecessary. Opal had flung herself off the sofa and was on Parrish in nanoseconds. If he’d been carrying any food it was already beyond rescue.

It was barely evening. Parrish had made good time from school, which meant either Henry or Gansey had dropped him off, but Ronan had told Gansey he was coming here. Or rather, he’d told Blue, because his phone was still somewhere on the pavement outside Monmouth.

He hadn’t asked, but Adam’s expression when he entered the room wasn’t combative. At least not until; ‘Is that a DVD player?’

‘Relax, Parrish. I’m not leaving it here.’ Ronan used one hand to lift his own bag, now incongruously packed with paper, colouring pencils, and stickers. ‘Can’t, anyway. It’s Gansey’s.’

Adam dropped his backpack on his bed, and permitted Opal to search through it curiously.

‘What are you watching?’

Ronan sighed and declined to answer, and Adam waited for Opal to finish before repeating his inquiry.

‘Secret Life of Pets.’ She told him brightly, and then, louder; ‘I want a pet.’

‘You are a pet.’ Ronan answered.

Adam liberated his notebooks and laptop from Opal’s clutches. ‘Don’t be an asshole.’

‘Yeah.’ Opal propelled herself towards the couch. ‘Don’t be an asshole.’

Ronan looked over in time to see Adam wince. ‘Thanks, Parrish.’

‘Don’t.’ He shook his head, raised a hand. ‘Don’t even.’

He laid his laptop on the table, noticing the plastic bag on the counter. ‘What did you get?’

‘Thai.’

Opal crawled onto the sofa, and reached for Ronan’s bag. He passed it to her grimly. The sticker epidemic was about to begin.

‘Did you make sure-’

‘ _Parrish_.’ Ronan interrupted. ‘She likes spicy food.’

Adam stared at him, silently opening his notebook.

‘She likes spicy food.’ Ronan repeated insistently. ‘She’s got an iron stomach, remember? She eats dirt and bark and stuff.’

Adam gave up, took a single step sideways and leaned across the table.

‘I have to study for a while.’ His fingers curved over Ronan’s shoulder, pleasantly heavy. ‘You should eat.’

Ronan shrugged, completely focused on the way Adam’s thumb followed the movement of his shoulder blade. ‘We ate. We snacked. We snack.’

His grip tightened. ‘Did you bring her through the balcony door?’

‘Yeah.’ Ronan frowned, but Adam’s alarm was apparent. ‘She’s not afraid of heights. Damn, Parrish, I’m not going to drop her.’

Adam glared, but returned to his laptop with some semblance of maturity. Ronan tried to return to the movie, discovering that Opal had randomly applied some stickers to a colouring book and some to the leg of Ronan’s jeans. ‘Mutant-’

She poked her tongue out.

 

 

 

Later, Adam tucked her in on the couch under one of his most hideous blankets (faintly marked in places by what Ronan suspected was his own blood). He’d eaten at the table, still studying, and Opal had gone through two more movies before falling asleep, leaving Ronan colouring in the Ninja Turtle outlines in her book.

‘I’ve always admired your work.’ Adam commented casually, looking over his shoulder. ‘Untapped potential.’

Ronan nodded. ‘Forget crime, I must only communicate through artworks now.’

Adam pressed a palm to Ronan’s back and crouched next to him, carefully avoiding the table but trying not to jostle the sofa. ‘I’ve got to shower.’

There was a pause, and Ronan stopped colouring. He didn’t think he was going to be reprimanded. Adam might not have invited them, but he hadn’t indicated that they were disturbing him.

‘I’m glad you came.’ He rested his head against Ronan’s arm, face down. ‘I’m sorry I told you not to.’

So he’d answered the text, then.

Probably a good thing Ronan had already broken the phone.

‘Are you alright?’ He asked, letting the green pencil fall to the paper. It wasn’t his to break.

‘Yeah.’

‘Are you lying?’

Adam sighed. ‘Yeah.’


	6. Dumb ways to die, so many dumb ways to die

The psychiatrist was late.

Adam sat in the principal’s office, alone, and stared at the desk. The room was shockingly quiet, compared with the constant murmur of noise and motion in the school corridors. Maybe the walls were intentionally soundproof. They must have been the only ones in the building with wood panelling.

The last time Adam had been in this office Greenmantle had been sitting next to him, barely three feet away. The memory didn’t seem real. It seemed like the start of some kind of delirium, that Adam couldn’t clearly replay and wasn’t sure he wanted to.

He carefully didn’t clench his fists, or his jaw. He wouldn’t bite his nails, or fiddle with his clothing, or scratch or fidget or worry. He had to be calm.

Greenmantle was hardly at large. Federal investigators had come to dig into his business in the city, and would almost certainly be poking into his interests elsewhere. That didn’t mean Adam had forgotten that he knew Ronan’s identity, and about his own… abilities. With a small logical leap Greenmantle would be able to identify Henry, even Blue.

Piper’s death was the strongest source of consolation.

Adam remembered the first fight he’d witnessed between the Lynches. Declan’s anger about Viridiveste, his knowledge of the threat. He’d said they could kill Ronan, despite the healing. The Demon could kill him.

But it was dead.

Other things could kill him, undoubtedly. Adam had considered the possibilities, reflexively, in case he was able to prevent them. Catastrophic head trauma, for example, although he didn’t know how to identify the threshold beyond which Ronan wouldn’t come back. A bullet, maybe. Through the frontal lobe.

Drowning, possibly, because Adam didn’t know how good a swimmer Ronan was or how much water decreased his strength and manoeuvrability. Acid, because the damage went so deep so fast, depending on where it landed. Electricity, a constant threat, because it disrupted his healing.

And Adam, maybe. Asphyxiation, or destruction, or… whatever he’d done to Chimera.

The door opened unexpectedly, and Adam jumped.

‘Adam.’ Koehn announced crisply. ‘This is Dr. Williams.’

A second woman scooted through the doorway, as Adam stood, and offered a hand.

She was smartly dressed, sophisticated, and greeted Adam with formal politeness, but she was also flushed, her palm was damp against Adam’s, and slightly stammered her words. ‘It’s a pleasure.’

‘I’m going to be around.’ Koehn explained. ‘Just let Fiona know if you need anything.’ She nodded firmly and pulled the door closed.

Adam waited for the doctor to circle the desk, and shuffle through her bag, before he sat back down. She sank into her own chair with a sigh of relief.

‘I’m sorry about the delay, Adam.’ She began, opening a notepad. ‘Can I call you Adam? You can call me Lucy, if you’d prefer…’

‘Adam is fine.’

She nodded, once, twice, rapid and uneasy. He hesitated, but she was turning pages, searching for something, obviously unsettled. ‘Are you alright?’

Lucy twitched, slightly. ‘I’m sorry. There was an accident on my way here… It’s really not very nice.’

‘What happened?’

Her brow furrowed delicately. ‘A young woman ran into traffic, I believe.’ She made a small noise of annoyance and plunged a hand back into her bag, withdrawing a second notepad. ‘Ah, here we go. Honestly, such a…’

She seemed to become sharply aware of Adam’s presence, and went rigidly quiet.

He left his hands relaxed on the arms of the chair, and watched her patiently. Her dented composure gave him some confidence.

‘Alright, Adam. Are you ready to start?’

 

 

 

The news was running a story on gang violence downtown, near Parrish’s old haunts. The police had tried to keep the incident locked down, but some genius leaked it to the press, and it was all over the city by the next day.

Someone had defected, killed two of his brethren and bolted. One broadcaster predicted an immediate descent into city-wide chaos, as the injured gang sought retribution against their rivals. Admittedly, he wasn’t wrong, but it still didn’t _help_ to point it out.

It was a handful from the moment it started. Ronan’s job wasn’t to keep them alive, just to stop their rabid little war from hurting anyone else… but it was practically impossible to keep track of all the conflicts erupting in different places all at once, even with Gansey’s help. Aegis was out in the field too, disposing of weapons and ammunition and dirty money, but there was no sign of Ironbee.

Nights were long and bloody, and Ronan slept during the day, interrupted often by Gansey’s calls (to his new phone, which Gansey had insisted he organise). Opal messed with his stuff, ate everything, and played with Chainsaw, until he’d slept enough and healed enough to get up.

The injuries were mild, mostly a light stabbing or a gunshot wound. He found the damage increasingly distasteful, but not unbearable. He had a high pain tolerance, just not the patience to match it.

He’d caught the edge of a shotgun shell, for the first time, and he was still sleeping it off when Opal decided to sit on him and pull his ears.

‘What?’ He shifted, attempting to dislodge her. ‘What d’you want?’

‘We’re out of food.’ She explained disparagingly. ‘We need food.’

He levered himself off the couch with a groan. ‘Did you eat everything?’

She widened her eyes, gesturing impatiently. ‘Yes.’

‘Fine, we’ll go shopping.’

‘No.’ She curled over, scowling. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘Then no food.’ He nearly tripped over the carpet, looking around for Chainsaw blearily. She must have gone back to the bedroom, unless she was picking around the kitchen for crumbs.

‘Gansey can get food.’ Opal grumbled. ‘He always brings food.’

‘Gansey-’ Ronan reached for his phone, cursing the pain radiating from the back of his ribcage. ‘- isn’t coming home for three hours.’

Opal examined him, most likely to judge his honesty, and then whined like a despairing beagle.

‘We can go now, and get back in half an hour.’ Ronan told her, but she immediately shook her head.

‘I don’t want to go out there.’

Ronan leaned on the edge of the couch and pressed his thumbs to his eyes.

She wasn’t a troublemaker. _Christ, no_. She was as easy a kid as they came, but he struggled sometimes. It was like having an argument with a stubborn gerbil. Logic really wasn’t a factor.

‘One thing.’ He yielded. ‘One thing, until later. I’ll be ten minutes. What do you want?’

It was pizza. Always pizza. From Nino’s, so at least he could order in advance.

He hated leaving her at Monmouth. Technically, she’d survived by herself in what amounted to a wilderness and this was a walk in the park by comparison, but he still felt shitty about it.

And sure, invisibility. If anything happened, she knew how to escape and how to hide. She was vicious, and he’d taught her to fight as nasty as she could.

But once, when he was eight, he’d flooded the kitchen by accidentally leaving the sink tap running while attempting to extinguish a fire he’d caused after trying to toast marshmallows over a gas flame using wooden skewers.

So he didn’t have a lot of faith in the common sense of children.

He locked up, and went downstairs to the BMW. It had been sorely neglected while Ronan spent his days at home and nights in the suit, and he felt a rush of affection as he climbed in. The seat curved around his bruises in a comfortingly familiar embrace. He wanted to sit in the silence with his eyes closed, for a few minutes, and soak it up.

He could picture Parrish, too, in the passenger seat, looking dryly amused by Ronan’s sentimentality.

‘Puke.’ Someone said, loudly, and Ronan suppressed the inevitable flinch. He didn’t bother to open his eyes… just silently repeated the same thing he always did.

Kavinsky was dead. _Dead_.

‘Y’know he’s lying to you, thickshit.’

 _Don’t engage with him._ ‘He’s not lying.’ _Fuck_.

‘You’re full of shit.’ Kavinsky observed blithely. ‘And you know it.’

‘Oh-’ Ronan shoved the gearstick into reverse, sighing. ‘- get fucked.’

Kavinsky was in the car all the way to Nino’s and all the way back, mouthing off without a pause. The healing fatigue was the main thing that kept Ronan from lashing out. He was too tired to make the effort.

He didn’t mind Parrish keeping things to himself. It was… That was Adam. He liked privacy.

Until it endangered him, whereupon it rapidly became Ronan’s business.

He narrowly avoided scratching the car as he turned back into the garage under Monmouth, and almost opened the door into a pillar. He must’ve been nearly fully healed, but it didn’t stifle the exhaustion.

There were six pizzas, enough to keep Opal satisfied and feed Gansey when he got home, Sargent too if she was visiting.

Ronan climbed the stairs, slowly, pizza boxes tucked under one arm. Kavinsky hadn’t left the car, and Ronan hoped that by now he was gone, fading into nothingness as quickly as he’d appeared. An unfounded fear of him following Ronan into the apartment always nested somewhere in his brain, despite _knowing_ it couldn’t happen. He unlocked the apartment door, swung inside and kicked it shut.

His skin stung, a small point of discomfort below his ribcage, like a needle, and he brushed at it vaguely. His fingers caught on metal.

The television was still jabbering across the room, but something else was producing a low scraping sound, overcutting it.

Ronan was still staring at the bar of metal sticking out of his stomach, the slim black and white fletching. He was starting to bleed through his shirt, around the entry wound. There were streaks of blood on his fingertips.

The apartment looked undisturbed… empty. Images on the television screen were the only things moving. There was nothing visible through the doorway into the kitchen, nothing in the darkened archway to the hall. He had to find Opal.

The scraping noise stopped. His stomach was hurting more, burning at the edges.

He saw a shadow, and there was another sting buried under his collarbone. He could see the shaft of the second arrow without looking down, and the wound felt more distinct. He caught his breath, and his lungs yielded pain.

‘Opal-’ He couldn’t see her, but she was here. These were his arrows, and he’d taught her to use _his_ crossbow. Why she was… shooting at him… remained obscure… ‘Opal?’

One of Ronan’s legs gave out, and he knelt, grunting. His healing-slow brain had started processing the injury, and it fucking _hurt_.

On his right, the air changed, rippling. Opal appeared, the crossbow half her height and dragging behind her. She had another arrow clutched in one fist, broadhead forward like a weapon. She was watching him like prey, eyes narrowed.

‘Opal, goddammit.’ He raised a hand. ‘It’s _me_.’

She must have identified him, because she dropped the crossbow, and edged closer, recognition dawning in her eyes.

Ronan gasped; ‘What are you-’ He cut himself off with a yelp when she stabbed him in the hand.

‘Ow! Jesus fucking Christ, Opal _stop_.’ She’d already darted back, out of his reach, and he yanked the blade out of his palm with a hiss. ‘Ouch, motherfucking _ouch_. Shit. Oh, fuck.’

He didn’t think she had another weapon, and the room was starting to blur slightly, so he slouched down to the floor on his side, mumbling complaints and swear words in significant quantity.

‘Opal. Opal, damn. Come on, what did I do? You alright? Opal?’

He could add crossbow arrow to his injury list. Also, being attacked by his roommate.

There was something wrong, unquestionably. Whether she hadn’t known it was him, or she hadn’t cared, he didn’t know.

‘Mutant?’ He couldn’t see her, from where he was lying. His shirt was sticky. He could feel the tips of the arrows scratching into the floor when he leaned too far back.

They’d managed to sink deep, slicing all the way through flesh and muscle, and the first had probably gone through his stomach. If he could twist around enough he could snap the tips off, but one of his hands was now liberally oozing blood and getting a good angle was problematic. He could try and break the fletching off instead, and pull them out his back, but there wasn’t much to get a grip on left in front of him.

The apartment smelled like pizza, which was one thing to be grateful for. Ronan searched for his phone, ignoring the blood he was smearing down his jeans.

Gansey and Parrish were at school. Cheng, too, but he’d probably pass out if he saw this anyway.

Ronan tried to call Sargent, instead, but the phone refused to register his damp fingerprints.

He groaned. Today was not his day.


	7. This game is called 'Avoidance and Denial' and whoever is least rational wins

Adam didn’t hear Gansey’s phone go off, but he felt it, a shiver in the air, two feet from his own leg.

Gansey withdrew the phone, glanced at the screen. Adam watched him rise, brow furrowing, and gesture to the teacher, who waved him into the hall.

A minute passed. Two.

Adam turned his pencil, watched the teacher. He wondered if he could hear Gansey, if that was even possible. He knew Ronan had inhuman hearing, but it was actually _hearing_ , not some kind of psychic sense.

He wouldn’t have listened in, anyway. It could have been Blue, or someone in Gansey’s family. His sister, possibly, or one of his parents.

Three minutes. Four minutes.

The teacher was distracted. Adam could stand, navigate a way out with his bag, without incurring too much suspicion. It might have been an emergency. Was that why Henry hadn’t come to school?

He drew a breath, counted. Probably it was nothing. Henry could get to Blue and Ronan, first, anyway.

Five minutes. Gansey reappeared, and Adam exhaled. He was too paranoid.

Then Gansey murmured something to the teacher, who frowned but nodded, and Gansey came back to his chair to collect his bag.

Adam looked at him, searching, and Gansey’s expression melted into a smile. ‘It’s my mother.’ He whispered. ‘I’ll come back and pick you up.’

Adam blinked once, tried to read beneath Gansey’s warmth, and saw nothing. He smiled back. ‘Good luck.’

 

 

 

Fifteen minutes, from Aglionby to Monmouth. Gansey tried calling Blue.

Ronan had claimed that she wasn’t picking up, and that, at least, was true. She was almost definitely in the middle of a lecture. Ronan never did keep track of her schedule.

He tried calling Ronan back, instead. If Ronan didn’t answer, Gansey would be able to assume this was all in his head. Again. 

He’d still have to go to Monmouth. He’d still have to check for himself that Ronan was unharmed.

The phone rang twice, and Opal picked up. She was crying. _Oh, Christ._

It was the seventh time. The fourth with Ronan. Twice Gansey had walked in on him dying, twice now he’d gotten a phone call pleading for help.

Once he’d seen Ironbee shot out of the sky, on the news. Once he’d stumbled across Adam in the school bathroom, in a pool of his own blood. Twice he’d found Blue, folding over herself from a migraine that won’t stop, or collapsing in the middle of a sentence.

The problem with Ronan was that it was so eminently possible that he’d be bleeding out somewhere, and so likely that one day Gansey would be needed, that he wasn’t able to automatically dismiss these events as nightmares.

He’d sounded hazy on the phone. Said it was an accident, and nothing serious. Adam and Henry didn’t have to be interrupted.

He needed Gansey to come help with Opal, but he’d sounded off. Hurt.

Gansey hoped it was a trick… a delusion, like the others. He hated it, hated seeing the people he cared about being destroyed, and believing that it could be real, genuine. But it was better than it actually being real and genuine.

The BMW was in the garage. Gansey left the Pig slanted sideways across two parking spots.

Ronan would be fine, for sure. He’d been home with Opal when Gansey had left this morning, and there was no reason he would have left.

But someone could have come to the apartment…

Gansey took the stairs, faster than he meant to. He’d find Ronan intact, and doubtlessly baffled and annoyed by Gansey’s concern.

He hit the door, scrabbled for the handle, shoved it open. The kitchen on the right, empty. The hallway. The table, beyond the couch facing the television. He was almost certain the place was undisturbed, until he closed the door.

Ronan was on the floor. _A_ Ronan was on the floor, with _an_ Opal. He was bleeding, predictably, but the blood was most obvious on Opal’s sweater, where she was crouched on it and where her sleeves were curled around his shoulder.

Gansey didn’t move.

‘Gansey.’ Ronan said thickly. ‘Hey.’

Opal didn’t even look up, but the visible side of her face was red and splotchy.

‘Can you… ah… can you take Opal to the… to the kitchen?’

He’d been bleeding for a while. There were sizeable smears of blood on the floor, on his clothes, on Opal. He looked half-asleep, motionless, even more pale than usual. His mouth was dark with blood.

Gansey hadn’t answered. He wondered if he should call out - if the real Ronan was asleep in his room, or something - or try to ring Blue again.

‘Gansey?’ Ronan moved, trying and failing to sit up. ‘I gotta get to the bathroom.’

He couldn’t tell if it was real. It felt real, but this kind of thing always did. Did it matter? Gansey would try and help him either way, and if it was the same thing as before, Ronan would just die.

He didn’t want to see it, but he didn’t have a choice.

It was two steps to Opal, and he swept her up despite her objections. She’d have to have clean clothes, in the spare room somewhere. Gansey would get them for her afterwards. He lifted her onto the bench next to the sink, scrubbed it swiftly and started running warm water.

‘Stay here.’ He squeezed her hand gently. ‘I’ll be back.’

He returned to Ronan, dragging himself into a sitting position with one hand, leaving stripes of crimson on the wall.

‘Opal.’ Ronan muttered, letting Gansey pull an arm around his shoulders. ‘Don’t leave her alone.’

‘Alright.’ Gansey stood, hefting him upright with a grunt. ‘Come on first.’

He could get Ronan into the bathroom, but he didn’t know what to do afterwards. There were arrows sticking out of Ronan’s chest. High school first aid had taught Gansey CPR, not… projectile removal.

This was one of many things Blue was far better at managing than him.

‘What happened?’

’S’an accident.’

Two arrows and this amount of blood hardly looked like an accident, but Gansey didn’t know how to argue. Ronan was the master of getting himself into life-threatening situations.

Or maybe Adam was the master, and Ronan was the apprentice. Maybe they were even.

Gansey pushed the bathroom door open with his foot, and helped Ronan step into the shower. ‘What are you going to do about these?’

If Gansey walked out, and came back, Ronan would be dead. He was certain.

‘Gotta break them off.’ Ronan leaned on the wall, seemed to focus very intently on not falling over. ‘Get them out.’

‘You can’t do that on your own.’ Gansey cringed. There wasn’t enough leverage. The arrows were metal of some kind, and there wasn’t enough sticking out of either side of him to grip with both hands and create snapping force.

‘I can.’ Ronan met his gaze, exhausted and determined. ‘Opal. _Please_. Just close the door.’

Opal had obligingly dangled her hands in the sink. Gansey used a dish towel to help her clean her face. He couldn’t hear anything from the bathroom, wasn’t sure he wanted to. There was a stack of pizza boxes on the counter opposite the sink, gently wafting the smell of pepperoni and melted cheese.

The wall creaked, as Ronan must have turned on the shower. At least it seemed like he was still alive in there.

‘Okay.’ Gansey finished his attempt at cleaning and lifted Opal down from the bench. ‘Let’s get some clean clothes.’

He was waiting in the hall outside her room when Ronan left the bathroom, barely dressed and looking like hell, but alive and intact and breathing.

‘Jesus.’ Gansey had a bloodied dish towel in one hand, Opal’s scrunched up sweater in the other. ‘What the hell is going on, Ronan?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’

‘It was an accident.’ Ronan shifted from one wall of the corridor to the other, wincing. ‘She thought I was an intruder.’

‘ _How?’_

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Ronan-’

‘Just forget it.’

Opal’s door opened, and she emerged timidly, watching Ronan.

‘Just forget it.’ Ronan repeated, more lightly. He called her over, and tapped her on the top of the head. ‘Alright? It’s nothing. We’re just gonna forget it.’

And Gansey understood, even if he didn’t want to. Nothing would stand in the way of Ronan protecting Opal, not even physical injury. Probably not even death.

But Ronan had survived, and that meant… this was definitely real.

‘Go get some pizza with Gansey.’ Ronan nudged Opal down the corridor, and continued, gingerly, towards his own room.

There was so much pizza. They ate in front of the television, but neither of them were watching. Opal didn’t look convinced by Ronan’s assertions, and Gansey didn’t feel it. There was no sign of the crossbow, no evidence of what had happened. Ronan must have been coming through the door, and she could have been right in front of him, across the room, or in the hall. But she’d reloaded the damn thing, shot him again. How was it possible she hadn’t recognised _Ronan_? How couldn’t she have known it was him?

The door rattled. Opal shot to her feet like a meerkat.

It was Blue, with her own key, sticking her head into the room curiously.

‘Gansey?’ Surprised, she ventured further inside. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’

It took three seconds for her to read his face, see Opal, notice the ominous stains of blood on the floor. ‘Oh, god. Where is he?’

‘I’m here.’ Ronan left the hall, thankfully fully clothed and headed for the pizza. He nodded. ‘Sargent.’

He was walking like a newborn, which presumably went a long way in confirming Blue’s suspicions. She raised both eyebrows. ‘You called. So I figured you were dying.’

‘Smart.’ He tapped his temple knowingly, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Blue glanced at Gansey, rolled her eyes, and followed Ronan.

 

 

 

Blue Sargent was losing track of her friends.

She didn’t particularly think it was her fault. Her friends were unpredictable individuals at the best of times, except for Gansey, who was preternaturally consistent.

Henry was AWOL, and he’d gone past the point of offering explanations. Adam was working all hours of the week, around school and whatever he was building with Henry. Ronan, incredibly, had his head in the vigilante game, but he was sketchy as shit about everything else that was going on, especially after what had happened with Opal.

Even Gansey had taken a level in obsessiveness since school had come back.

And there were others… classmates from college. One girl had missed a whole week, and only shown up, weeping, to hand in her deferral. One of the sculptors had set his project on fire with a welding torch, apparently by accident, and the whole building had to be evacuated.

One of Blue’s friends had fled in the middle of a lecture, and word had spread later that her brother had been fished from the river (miraculously still alive) after having jumped off the side of the city bridge.

Her apartment was where Blue was headed, with flowers and a tub of ice-cream. She didn’t expect to stay long, and hopefully would have enough time to visit Adam, three levels up in the same building.

It wasn’t unlike Adam to be focused, and admittedly, Blue had never known him before his life had been riddled with vigilantes and villains, but his behaviour seemed strange. More time spent with Henry than Ronan, for starters, and odd detachment from the Veil’s activities. She wanted an opportunity to talk to him, at least.

He must have been at home. Henry and Gansey had a debating match, and he didn’t have a shift at work until the evening.

Blue knocked on his door. She waited, glancing down the hall, but he didn’t answer.

She’d never been to his previous apartment… but neither had Gansey. Henry referenced his only visit there with dramatic horror.

She knocked again. There was noise, vaguely distinguishable, from inside. The television, unless it was from the apartment next door. The rooms were small, but Adam had seemed to genuinely like it when the realtor had shown them around.

‘Adam?’ She was sure the noise was coming from inside. Possibly he’d fallen asleep on his homework again.

Distantly, Blue thought about reaching Monmouth, and knowing with absolute certainty that Ronan was halfway dead. He never would have called her otherwise. It was hard enough for him to make an effort to call Gansey, let alone anyone else.

She had a spare key to Adam’s apartment, too. And he’d probably just be grateful if she broke in to wake him up.

She unlocked the door, pushed it open gently. ‘Adam?’

The television (evidence of Lynch’s propensity to give gifts merely out of spite) was on, playing coverage of some hockey match. The kitchen light was on, too. Blue crept to the corner and peered around, expecting to see Adam dozing gently at the table.

He _was_ sitting there, bent over his textbook, but he wasn’t asleep. He was reading, taking notes in longhand, his only movement one hand across the page as he wrote.

Blue straightened up, startled, moderately offended.

‘Adam.’ Was he ignoring her?

He still didn’t react. She hesitated. He was completely fixated on his work, but Blue was barely five feet away. ‘ _Adam_.’

He snapped upright so quickly he knocked his chair over. The light from the television flickered, and Blue raised her hands, cautiously. Adam was staring at her, expression shuttered, unreadable.

‘It’s only me.’ She added, edging forwards. ‘Blue.’

He watched her for a moment longer, and then abruptly looked down, and leaned to pick up his chair.

‘Blue.’ He repeated.

‘I didn’t know you liked hockey.’ _Or sports. Or television._

His gaze moved to the television as he righted the chair. ‘No. It’s just noise to me.’

She’d scared him, somehow. His hands were trembling. He looked… fragile.

‘Blue.’ He said again. ‘Are you okay?’

It apparently hadn’t occurred to him that she’d just entered his place without an invitation and startled him. Then again, he’d been conditioned by Ronan.

‘I’m fine. I was in the building, and I wanted to-’ She noticed him glancing around the room, searching for something, wary of something. ‘Hey, do you feel like going to get some lunch?’

It was Adam, after all, so a flat out refusal wouldn’t have surprised her, but he took a moment to consider it.

‘Sure.’ He answered, softly. ‘Yeah, sounds good.’


	8. We've added a circle to Dantean hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two for the price of...  
> A really, really long wait. Sorry.

‘It’s not Alice.’ Adam lowered himself onto Henry Cheng’s sofa, bowl of noodles in hand. His head was throbbing, probably from hours without natural light. ‘Unless she’s fabricating clean error sweeps.’

‘There are failsafes. It should not be possible.’ Henry answered. He gestured with his chopsticks. ‘But, alas, none of this should.’

‘If it’s not her, the software is fine.’ There were enough alternatives, Adam suspected, to make this unsurprising to Henry. ‘Is there any chance the hardware is the source?’

‘A chance. I can bring Lynch in, but it’s unlikely to produce results. The software would indicate if there were hardware malfunctions.’

 _Ronan_ , Adam thought, _would agree_.

‘And the other tests?’ Henry glanced up, as calm as ever. Impressively clinical.

‘Nothing abnormal so far.’

‘Nothing?’ He almost sounded disappointed.

‘Nothing detected.’

That didn’t mean there was nothing. It could just mean the tests were inadequate.

Henry paused. ‘What would you recommend I do next?’

‘I’m not sure. An EEG, maybe. Or a PET scan.’

Henry nodded, sombre. ‘I can arrange that.

There were unspoken concerns, unacknowledged details, but Adam didn’t doubt that Henry was entirely aware of them. He had never found a problem with any of the tech, with any of the software. Alice hadn’t reported any issues, and hadn’t demonstrated any suspicious operations during Adam’s prying.

Henry was the only one experiencing the malfunctions, and the conclusion, though unstated, was accepted. The problem was with him.

He suspected it was a biochemical issue. Adam was more concerned about his neurology.

The associated paranoia was one clue. Henry was a little hyperactive, generally, but he had never been flighty. He was insightful, too. He knew something was wrong, and he was determined to fix it.

‘Are you going to tell Gansey?’

‘Ideally when I find something.’ Henry lifted a glass of sparkling water. At first glance it had seemed to be pretension (his glassware, like his linen and furniture, was identical and immaculate, though he never drank alcohol) but it was just another element of control in a carefully orchestrated environment. ‘Although it may be wise to give Lynch administrative access to the suits in addition to yourself.’

‘Ronan-’ Adam lifted an eyebrow. ‘Interesting strategy.’

‘Lynch has the best aptitude for violence out of the three of you… no offence intended.’

‘None taken.’ Adam paused. He could feel himself smirking, even if he couldn’t precisely identify why. ‘Would they fit him?’

‘I have no idea what you mean.’

Ronan was better in a fight. In armour… Would that alleviate Henry’s doubts? Would it alleviate Adam’s?

He wasn’t immune to anxiety concerning the eruptions of violence in the city and Ronan’s attendance to them. There was little to fear - Ronan was stronger than any human - but Adam was still, unaccountably, afraid.

They retired, Henry to his bedroom, and Adam to the spare room.

All of Henry’s sheet sets were crisp, modern colours, and everything in the house, including the spare bedroom, was kept pristine. There was unquestionably some mysterious housekeeper employed by the complex who had the good sense to overlook Henry’s more esoteric belongings, and nothing was ever out of place.

Adam always experienced a small rush of satisfaction upon crawling into the perfectly pressed and ready-made bed. Staying at Henry’s was the closest he’d ever been to staying in a luxury hotel, down to the view over manicured lawns and the magical appearance of a comprehensive breakfast whenever Adam dragged himself out of bed.

He still paused at the point of taking his sweater off. The temperature was fine, the bed was comfortable, Henry afforded him the utmost privacy, but he was ill-at-ease with too much bare skin in someone else’s house, too many visible scars, and the regrettable absence of Ronan Lynch.

The bed was bigger than Adam’s, easily comfortable for two people. Sleeping alone was pleasant, particularly without the likelihood that he would wake up to his father’s presence in the room, but it was distractingly simple to imagine Ronan with his legs folded on the charcoal sheets, the sound of his voice in the dark.

He hadn’t slept the last time he’d visited Adam’s apartment, just kept watch over Opal. He hadn’t been close enough for a whispered conversation, let alone close enough to touch.

Adam had considered the possibility Ronan resented his time with Henry, but there was no evidence of it. He’d been concerned… and Adam had confessed to the psychiatrist. There’d been one after his parents’ funeral, Ronan said. He didn’t like them either.

It was harder to introduce the topic of Robert Parrish, and every new delusion served to cement Adam’s reluctance. His father knew better than anyone (except Adam himself) how humiliating the truth would be.

Adam had contemplated at greater length if there was a connection with Henry.

It seemed probable. Hallucinations… unverified. Anxiety. Paranoia. All things Adam could identify in his own behaviour.

If He had any spine he would have admitted the similarity by now, but pride was a formidable barrier. What could Henry think of Robert Parrish’s return but that Adam was afraid of him (he was), that Adam was a coward (he was), that Adam was weak (he was).

What could Henry recognise but that Adam wasn’t in control? He was probably responsible for Henry’s own suffering, and he was yet to volunteer the information due to his own shame.

If Ronan found out he would… probably swear vengeance on a dead man. Like Adam was a child to be protected, or an injustice to correct.

Ronan’s way of looking at him was a gift, a drug. He didn’t want Ronan to look at him differently.

 

He must have slept, because there seemed to be something in the room with him, that hadn’t been there before. Movement, and noise. He tried to concentrate on it, pushing himself up on his elbows against the tension of the sheets.

‘Parrish?’ Henry drew closer from the doorway, hands raised in apology. ‘I thought I heard-’

The room was coming into focus - there was a street lamp just outside the window - and Henry’s face was a delicate portrait of anxiety. Just over his shoulder, in the shadow of the open door, Adam registered more motion.

He tried to tear himself free of the bedsheets, flinging them aside.

Henry had already turned, hearing the armour start forward from behind him. Another step, and it had seized him by the throat, mechanics humming in clean, almost-human movement.

‘ _Henry_ -’

It was difficult to comprehend exactly what was happening, but the suit was bigger than either of them, and had lifted Henry clear off the floor with little effort. Adam scrambled off the bed, catching Henry by the waist, trying to loosen the armour’s grip.

He knew, logically, that he couldn’t physically force the suit to let go. He knew, too, that he could destroy it, but he didn’t know how, or if he could stop without Ronan.

Henry was choking. Adam was prying at solid metal, his own breathing ragged. There were other shapes in the room, shifting, more armour, more suits. How were there so many? How had they gotten in?

‘Stop.’ Adam couldn’t dent the metal. He could barely hold it. If Ronan was here… ‘ _Alice, stop_.’

The suit released Henry, dropping him against Adam. They scrabbled for the relative safety of the mattress.

Henry was wheezing, quietly offended, and Adam still had his arm raised in helpless defiance. The armour had taken heed of the command, somehow, and remained still, watching impassively as they retreated.

There was another, in the shadow of the window, the Apidae, and a third in the corner, the Sympheta. Beyond the foot of the bed Adam could see a Metalmark, unpainted and not much more than a shell held together by sheer mechanical willpower.

The suit closest to the door was the Hornet, cross-hatched amber eyes sightlessly staring at them.

There couldn’t be anyone inside them. Adam had been working in the room downstairs with them all evening, and Henry’s house was sealed, and Alice… Alice wouldn’t allow it.

He kept his hand up, between the Hornet and Henry, but the armour didn’t try to seize it, or snap it from his wrist. A single one of the suits could pulverise them into dust. Four could level the building.

‘Alice?’ The room was eerily quiet. The suits didn’t move, without instruction. They didn’t breathe. It must have been easy for them to get in without Adam waking up. ‘What’s happening?’

Henry’s AI delivered with classical nonchalance. ‘My protocols are being overridden.’

‘By _what_?’

Henry slumped, a sudden weight against Adam’s body, apparently satisfied he wasn’t going to be further strangled by his own inventions.

Adam wasn’t equally confident. The suits other than the Hornet hadn’t moved, but each of them was facing the bed, watching, waiting.

This was a nightmare.

Henry’s hell was more than real.

Alice’s pause was unnecessarily suspenseful. ‘I do not know.’

‘Can you get them out? Now?’

‘I believe so.’

Both Adam and Henry flinched when the Metalmark moved first, slow and graceless, clunkily departing the room. The Sympheta followed, and the Apidae. The Hornet, for a long time, didn’t move.

It looked at them… head angled slightly so that Adam felt as though he could ask it a question and it would have no trouble responding. Technically it wouldn’t, because Alice would answer, but it felt like something else, like something independent occupied the space behind the mask.

Only when the others had gone, and the room was silent, the Hornet moved. It dropped the raised arm, swivelled with precision, and exited… but even as it stepped out of view Adam heard the head turn to watch them through the doorway.

His own head throbbed, a painful reminder. He still had an arm looped around Henry’s waist, conscious of the erratic rise and fall of his breathing, as the latter croaked. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, but you saw that, did you not?’

Adam knew exactly how this story was going to sound.

‘Monmouth?’ Henry whispered hoarsely.

‘God… yes.’

 

‘How do we get out?’ Adam left the bed, carefully skirting the doorway, and shoved his possessions untidily back into his backpack.

‘We may have to rely on Alice to restrain them long enough for us to reach the car.’ Henry advised, rubbing his throat. ‘The Fisker, that is. The Audi has armour in the trunk.’

‘What if they follow us?’ Blue would perhaps be able to control the armour, but Foxway was already occupied by other suits. Were they safer if Henry wasn’t nearby? Were they safer if Adam wasn’t?

‘There is a self-destruct mechanism.’ Henry explained, warily eyeing the rectangle of blackness leading into the hall. ‘Though I admit I’m not inclined to witness it up close.’

Gansey. Opal. Would leaving here only endanger more people?

Ronan could probably fight the armour. Adam would prefer he didn’t. Adam would prefer the suits didn’t move at all.

He went first, into the hall, with Henry barely a step behind him. The shadows loomed over them, threatening to disguise a mask or a metal hand, but their path was clear. They took the stairs into the living room, and the Apidae was behind the sofa, standing guard over nothing.

Adam hesitated, but not for long. He navigated slowly around the edge of the room, Henry following in uncharacteristic silence. Only the Apidae’s head moved, tracking their footsteps.

Where were the others? Would Alice even let them leave?

They made it into the garage unscathed… and even into the Fisker, but when the doors closed and the interior light went out it left them, again, in darkness.

Henry seemed to be afflicted by the same concerns as Adam. ‘Should we go?’

‘I don’t think we can stay.’ They could go to Adam’s apartment, but that would place civilians within ten metres of them at any given time. People who really wouldn’t cope if robots started crashing through the walls.

Henry started the car, and the headlights flickered on, illuminating the Audi opposite them, and the garage door, and the Hornet standing patiently beside it. Adam sank into his seat instinctively. Alice hadn’t exhibited any kind of flawed behaviour during his inspection, but possibly he’d missed something, and Henry had missed something, and all of this was about to get extremely ugly.

Henry nudged the car forward, guided it gently towards the door, and leaned over into Adam’s side of the car as it slid past the immobile armour.

‘Henry.’

‘Yes?’

The door rolled shut behind them. There were no suits visible in the mirrors, but Henry was still cautious in easing himself back upright.

‘Maybe you should get a new hobby.’


	9. Do my eyes deceive me, or is this... progress???

Gansey answered his phone on the first ring, despite it being 2am.

He didn’t seem especially convinced by Adam’s request to visit… at least not until they started knocking on the door to the apartment.

He was bleary-eyed and pyjama’d when he opened the door, but the television was still on, and Opal was peering at them over the back of the couch.

‘Adam… Henry.’ He stepped aside, and let them in. Adam lowered the phone and ended the call. ‘You’re up… late. Early? Late?’

He yawned. Opal launched herself off the couch in greeting.

‘President.’ Henry began. Adam could see him building up the nerve to continue, but he lost his focus almost immediately. ‘Were you sleeping on the sofa?’

‘Uh.’ Gansey scratched his jaw sleepily. ‘Yeah. I guess.’

Ronan wasn’t here. Adam could tell. Frustration curled under his skin. _More fights, more criminals_.

‘Has something happened?’ Gansey stirred himself, pinpointed the direction of the kitchen. ‘Do you need me?’

Adam lifted Opal up, carried her back towards the sofa. The mattress from the bed in her room had been moved to the living room, in front of the television. Ronan had left Gansey to watch over her.

‘Not urgently.’ Henry winced, sheepish. ‘Probably.’

Gansey stuck his head through the kitchen doorway, quizzical and suspicious. ‘What did you do?’

‘We’re experiencing a minor bout of armoured suit autonomy.’ Henry phrased delicately.

There was a pause before Gansey reappeared, his hair pushed back from his forehead, eyes wide. ‘Please tell me you’re not saying what I think you’re saying.’

‘The suits are compromised.’

‘Oh, god.’ Gansey clutched the doorframe. Opal looked at Adam, curious, but when he smiled at her she turned to the television. ‘What happened? Hacking?’

‘It’s one possibility.’

‘Out of how many?’ Gansey darted towards the sofa, searching for something. ‘I’ll call Blue.’

With Opal settled, Adam found ice in the kitchen for Henry’s throat, and lozenges in the bathroom. ‘What are we going to do about Alice?’

‘I am not sure, yet.’ Henry accepted the offerings with a grimace. ‘I can access the systems remotely, but if there is a hack, her defensive protocols should be in operation. If there isn’t, it’s vital to identify exactly what the issue is… but deactivating the armour is imperative.’

‘Are they moving?’ Gansey demanded, gesturing from across the room, the phone pinned to one ear. ‘Are they attacking? Are you okay?’

Adam waved him off. ‘Can we shut down Alice and still run diagnostics?’

‘It’s not so straightforward. She’s a collective intelligence. She may… resist.’

‘So she’ll try to defend herself.’ Adam leaned toward him. ‘Could that be the source of this problem?’

_Wishful thinking._

Adam could have set something off the night before, but he’d been poking through Henry’s stuff for weeks without incident. Alice reported interference in the spare room, and that, at least, would appear in a data log somewhere. The source of the interference… yet to be determined.

_Probably Adam._

They’d been in his room. Why?

‘I know.’ Gansey was saying to Blue. ‘I know. I know.’

He hadn’t been around for the other incidents Henry had reported, but did that mean he couldn’t be responsible for them?

‘I’ll tell them.’ Gansey continued. ‘Yeah. Right now.’

Had acknowledging his own influence escalated the situation?

‘Alright. See you soon.’ There was a gentle hesitation, and a soft murmur. ‘Love you too.’

Henry winked at Adam.

Gansey rejoined them suddenly, clearing his throat. ‘Look, we need to talk.’

‘Oh.’ Henry pulled an expression of mock dismay. ‘Are you ending things with us?’

Gansey raised an admonishing finger. ‘That’s not funny. Can we concentrate, please?’

‘Of course. Absolutely. Homicidal AI.’

‘Homicidal?’ Gansey’s horror was considerable. ‘You didn’t say-’

‘It isn’t uncontrollable.’ Adam reassured him. ‘We got Alice to call the armour off fairly quickly.’

‘Yes.’ Henry touched his neck, looking wounded. ‘Although perhaps faster would be preferable.’

Gansey examined him nervously. ‘But they are dangerous?’

‘Oh.’ Henry shrugged. ‘I should say extremely.’

Gansey fretted with his glasses. The information disturbed him, clearly, but there was something else bothering him, something he wasn’t admitting.

‘What is it?’ Adam asked, sneaking a glance towards the living room. Opal hadn’t resurfaced. Disney Junior was playing on the television.

‘Look.’ Gansey started, awkwardly. ‘Cards on the table here… I’m not, exactly… in great shape.’

Henry looked sideways at him, with demure disbelief.

Adam wasn’t sure how to respond.

Gansey coughed. ‘I mean. Things aren’t… I’m not…’

‘Gansey.’ Henry said, evenly. ‘We are beyond indignation.’

_He had that right._

‘I’ve been under the weather.’ Gansey continued, hastily. ‘Overly… anxious. Prone to… hallucinations.’

Adam pressed his fingernails into his palms, and held his breath.

‘Hallucinations?’ Henry interjected, abruptly. ‘You have been seeing things?’

‘I… Yes.’

Adam’s nails were biting through skin. He stared at the shoulder of Gansey’s pyjamas, dimly aware of the gold stitching on the chest that read “R.G.III”. He should have told Henry before. He should have brought it up as soon as the suspicion had set in.

Henry wasn’t a fool. He probably already knew.

‘Yes.’ Gansey repeated, quietly. ‘All of you. Dying.’

 _Jesus_.

Henry let the silence linger to signify respect before he responded. ‘I cannot operate my technology.’ He brushed off Gansey’s astonishment. ‘Since school started. Alice is unresponsive, or openly insubordinate. I believed the suits acted autonomously, refused to acknowledge commands. I assumed it was an issue with myself.’

Adam didn’t speak. He knew he had to, at some point. What the hell could he say? He’d _pretended_ to help.

‘An issue with-’ Gansey stared at him. ‘Henry-’

‘Adam was making observations to test my theory. The system did not have quantifiable problems before this evening, but it would appear things aren’t as simple as they seemed.’

Gansey closed his eyes, and removed his glasses to run his hand over his face wearily. ‘Damn.’ He replaced them and looked at Adam hopefully. ‘Thoughts?’

‘Hallucinogens.’ Adam offered, letting the spike of pain through his hands ground him. ‘A shared delusion, maybe. Fatigue? Or neurological impairment. Stress, but the case would be more isolated.’

He wished Ronan was here.

 

Blue arrived, barely twelve minutes later. Gansey had asked Henry to describe the events of the evening, repeatedly, in excruciating detail. Adam’s headache hadn’t lessened even marginally. He’d also become vaguely conscious, between Henry’s apartment and Monmouth, of the flimsiness of his own sleeping attire. Gansey witnessing it was undesirable enough, but Blue…

Henry, to be fair, was only in his underwear and a shirt with some band’s logo. Gansey looked like he could easily attend a formal dinner without changing.

Blue was wearing jeans and a hoodie when she showed up, already exhausted by their shenanigans and being dragged from a peaceful slumber.

Opal had dozed off on her bed. They moved the impromptu conference into the kitchen.

‘So, what?’ Blue was staring - potentially glaring - at them. ‘The suits are trying to kill us?’

‘Not us.’ Henry corrected, frowning. ‘Just me.’

‘Oh, great.’ Her sarcasm was excoriating. ‘No problem, then.’

Henry looked appropriately offended, and Gansey intervened. ‘How likely is there to be a connection between my experiences and yours?’

This was directed at Henry and Adam, and Adam struggled not to cross his arms, shift away, fall onto the defensive.

‘It must be linked to Opal.’ Blue pointed out, with unexpected certainty.

She obviously didn’t expect the silence her statement evoked, Henry’s doubt and Adam’s alarm.

Her gaze moved to Gansey, unimpressed. ‘You said you’d tell them.’

He was equally displeased. ‘I meant about me. That’s Ronan’s… that’s not my business.’

Adam clenched his jaw shut, and shot Henry a look, which he rapidly (and rightly) interpreted. ‘If we can provide assistance he will surely see the advantage to your telling us.’

‘Opal shot him.’ Blue said bluntly. ‘With his crossbow. She thought he was breaking in.’

Adam took a step back, to lean against the kitchen counter. He could see the television from here, but no sign of the little girl.

_She’d shot Ronan?_

He _had_ been teaching her to protect herself. And he _did_ have a habit of entering apartments through windows.

It still seemed impossible that Opal would hurt him, that she wouldn’t recognise him.

‘Was he badly injured?’ Henry inquired, lightly curious.

Gansey seemed at a loss to answer that question, but Blue just shrugged. ‘He was fine.’

‘So he didn’t think it was significant?’

‘He didn’t want to discuss it.’ Gansey admitted.

‘You don’t believe him.’ Adam said sharply. ‘Why?’

‘She shot him twice.’ Blue’s exasperation was tangible. ‘Point blank range, _and_ stabbed him in the hand. She was distraught about it, but there was _no way_ she didn’t see it was him.’

Gansey protested. ‘She couldn’t have intended-’

Opal had stabbed Ronan? Adam couldn’t identify exactly what the feeling under his skin was, but it wasn’t pleasant. Ronan hadn’t told him. When would he? Why would he?

She must have been hallucinating too… Like Henry, Gansey, and Adam, but she’d seen _Ronan_ as something else.

Did Ronan know Adam could be responsible?

Did he think telling Adam would make it worse?

Or that Adam was a threat to Opal?

Realistically, he _didn’t_ like the thought that she’d hurt Ronan. It made Adam itch to see him, badly. But he didn’t think Opal meant to, and he’d never try to harm her.

But he hadn’t tried to harm Noah either. And _never_ Ronan, who’d seen the worst he could do up close.

‘You’re suggesting a similar psychological state?’ Henry mused. ‘And a shared cause? Parrish?’

Adam suppressed a flinch. He met Henry’s gently inquisitive gaze as blankly as he could.

‘Any thoughts?’ Henry continued. If Adam wasn’t insane (and he could be), his tone was toeing the border between encouraging and apologetic.

_He did know._

How could he not? Henry always considered all the angles.

‘I’ve had it too.’ Adam confessed, lowly. He wished he could sink through the floor, or just warp himself out of the room, like the Gray Man. ‘Things that seem real… but can’t be.’

_Say it. Rip off the fucking bandaid._

He couldn’t.

_Coward._

‘I keep seeing Persephone everywhere.’ Blue added, grimly. ‘I thought I just missed her, but… now I’m not sure. She doesn’t _do_ anything, though. She’s just _there_.’

So, all of them were affected?

_Ronan._


	10. That one goes in the vault...

It took effort to find his way into Ronan’s bed. Toys, colouring books, and small clothing had joined the debris already littered across the bedroom floor. The covers were bunched up to one side of the mattress, so Adam had to untangle them, and the pillows had been displaced across the length of the room.

He dug his way in anyway, pressed his back to the wall and his shoulder into the mattress. Mere proximity to Ronan’s possessions was comforting, alongside the awareness that he would be back, soon. It almost negated Adam’s apprehension about telling him.

Affecting others psychically was one thing, unintentional, forgivable. Affecting Opal, and causing enough fear for her to mistake Ronan for a threat, _that_ was different. Traumatising Gansey, that was different too. Hiding it? That was indefensible.

Ronan would be furious, and Adam understood that. Maybe he already was, if he’d linked Adam to Opal’s attack.

But for as long as Adam wasn’t sure, he could stay wrapped in Ronan’s blanket, in the silence, sleepily watching the night sky through the window.

He considered school obligations, and work… A half-conscious categorisation of urgent and prioritised tasks for the next week. Done right, the whole process could be completed automatically, without any active engagement. Done right, maybe he could stop his mind folding in on itself.

Or maybe it was irrelevant, and other steps needed to be taken. Isolating himself. Stopping himself.

Maybe someone else would have to stop him.

He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to be involved.

He still suspected that all this had come from Noah. Confronting Chimera had been predicated on the borrowing of his brother’s abilities, and he was certain this was the result. Noah gone, and Adam damaging things, hurting people.

He hadn’t been strong enough to do that before. He wasn’t strong enough to control it now.

Wood scraped on wood - the window opening - and Adam opened his eyes, surprised to find the visible rectangle of sky lighter than he remembered.

Ronan slipped inside, almost soundless, mask already dangling from one hand.

He hesitated before slowly closing the window, and there was a dull thunk as he dropped or kicked something on the floor.

Adam struggled to sit up, declaring his presence.

‘Parrish.’ Ronan stepped closer, and stepped out of his suit. Between Adam’s hazy vision and the half-light he was just a blurred outline. He touched Adam’s face. ‘Are you hurt?’

Adam wasn’t supposed to be here. He should explain. ‘No.’

His head hurt. Ronan’s eyes were blurry, bright, blue.

He wanted… He just _wanted_.

Ronan’s hand skated lower, to the curve of Adam’s neck. His voice was a rumble; ‘You’re okay?’

Adam nodded, found the edge of his jaw and stretched up to him.

His shoulders were slightly damp with sweat. He’d been fighting, recently, or he was healing, but he was solid and steady and _Ronan_. His balance was usually remarkable, but Adam preferred the way he buckled into the edge of the mattress, weight falling forward, reaching out to stabilise himself.

He’d wanted to be here every night for a month. Anywhere Ronan was, actually. It felt like hiding. It felt like… weakness.

But he wanted Ronan’s warmth and his voice and his longing.

Ronan’s knee landed on the edge of the mattress. His skin was bare from his neck to his hips, and Adam was taking full advantage of the fact, dragging him forwards with the pressure of his fingertips.

His thumb discovered the pathway of one of Ronan’s ribs, a sleek curve leading towards muscle, Ronan’s stomach, the soft trail of hair down his navel.

Ronan snatched his wrist a moment too late, murmuring an apology, but Adam had already grazed the wound with the heel of his hand.

It was small. Around the width of a golf ball, and hard at the edges like a scab. It was nestled under his ribcage, towards the top of his abdomen.

A place like that, it had to have been a good shot, but in that shape, it could hardly be an ordinary bullet.

It was too late, Ronan knew that. He sighed as Adam shoved him back.

It wasn’t a scab, but the injury wasn’t raw. It was black around the edges, an inexplicable indent in Ronan’s otherwise perfect skin. There was no blood on his skin, or oozing from Ronan’s flesh. The whole thing was cauterised. Charred.

‘What’s that?’ Adam was suddenly considerably more awake. He pressed one palm to Ronan’s stomach, squinting for clarity, trying to turn Ronan towards the light.

‘New weaponry.’ Ronan indicated a shapeless lump on the bedroom floor. He surrendered to Adam’s grip, and slumped the rest of the way onto the mattress. ‘Incendiary, maybe plasma.’

‘Here?’ Adam examined him carefully. It was difficult to tell how deep the wound was, because it was blackened all the way in. It would have been painful, but Ronan was blinking up at him languidly. ‘Prototypes?’

‘Mm.’ There were no marks on his legs, arms, the rest of his torso. He’d only taken one hit. ‘Someone’s sending them in from outside.’

There was a drawl in his voice, something insulting.

Adam stared at him. ‘Greenmantle?’

Ronan didn’t answer.

He was unusually lively, twisting strands of Adam’s hair round his fingers, waiting for him to be done with his inspection, to be closer. Adam frowned. ‘Will it heal?’

He hadn’t thought much about Ronan encountering fire, and he didn’t particularly want to.

‘Yes.’ Ronan was unconcerned. ‘Slower.’

‘Your cells are damaged.’

‘Yes.’

‘Let me turn the light on-’

‘No.’ Ronan sat up. ‘I need to shower.’

He slid off the bed, and Adam struggled to untangle himself from the covers. This was his only chance to explain, before Ronan realised the extent of what he’d done.

Ronan didn’t argue as Adam followed him to the door, but he raised a solitary, bemused eyebrow.

He could sit on the toilet in the bathroom and wait, without openly watching Ronan shower. There were medical supplies in the cabinet under the sink, zealously overstocked by Gansey. Some had clearly been broken open recently, probably as a result of the crossbow incident. Ronan rarely bothered with them, but his stomach hadn’t improved by the time he was finished showering, and Adam opened a bottle of antiseptic.

‘I don’t need it.’ Ronan pointed out, wrapping a towel around his waist.

Adam ignored him, tipping brown liquid onto a square of bandage. He came over, anyway, and let Adam press it to his stomach. 

‘Blue told me about Opal.’

Ronan went still. ‘What about Opal?’

‘She shot you-’

‘It was an accident.’ His answer was swift and sharp.

‘I know.’ Adam applied a piece of tape to the top of the bandage and Ronan’s skin. ‘Blue explained.’

Ronan exhaled. ‘It was nothing.’ He fretted at Adam’s hands, laying on another piece of tape. ‘Gansey overreacted.’

‘You called Gansey?’ The other day, when Gansey had left school. He _had_ been lying. Did Ronan tell him to lie? It didn’t seem like he was connecting Adam to this, but he wasn’t saying much.

Ronan shrugged. ‘Mistakes were made.’

Adam tried not to frown at him. He wouldn’t mind at least receiving a warning when Ronan was brutally wounded, but he wasn’t in a position of strength, in terms of honesty.

Adam had finished taping, and Ronan caught one of his hands, absently running a thumb over his knuckles. He repeated, evasively; ‘It was nothing. It would be like calling to tell you I got a papercut.’

Despite his irritation, Adam smirked. ‘That’s definitely not the same.’

He really didn’t think Adam had anything to do with it.

That would make this more difficult.

 

 

 

Ronan wasn’t tired, at all.

He hadn’t started healing yet. Whatever had burned his stomach had delayed his body’s recognition of the injury, and he had energy, hunger, restlessness to contend with.

Adam was making it worse, wry and faded in the bathroom. Ronan didn’t question why he was here, because he seemed okay. Exhausted, perhaps, and exasperated, but not hurt.

The Opal situation didn’t seem to alarm him much, which was a relief. He was more rational than Ronan, and his focus was on practicalities. Why call Gansey, instead of him? Why not tell him afterwards?

Ronan couldn’t risk disrupting the careful structure of Adam’s life. He couldn’t be the problem, the element to be fixed or removed to conserve time and energy.

He was more than willing to be low priority, so long as he was still there, somewhere. He wouldn’t endanger that.

There was probably school the next day, he wasn’t sure, but Adam was unexpectedly unwilling to sleep. He sat against Ronan’s pillows, legs stretched out, and silently watched Ronan change.

‘Are you worried about her?’ His voice was soft, but Ronan still hesitated, searching for a shirt.

He was… worried. Opal had described it afterwards, sniffling and mumbling. The monsters had come back for her, she’d seen them in the apartment.

Viridiveste’s scientists, white-clad and masked. She would have hidden, but she was afraid, as much for Ronan as for herself.

Ronan hadn’t seen them, or heard them. They probably weren’t real, like Kavinsky wasn’t real. They were delusions, but they’d persisted, even after someone real had arrived.

He didn’t know how to protect her, except to keep this as insignificant as possible, and never leave her alone.

Maybe he’d given her something, accidentally. Maybe whatever caused Kavinsky’s appearances, the gradual collapse of his brain, was affecting her too.

‘She’s learning well.’ Adam continued, in the absence of a response.

‘Yeah.’ Ronan muttered, discarding a shirt with excessive force. ‘Really well.’

‘She can defend herself.’ Adam added, his tone changing. ‘That’s what you wanted.’

‘Yes.’ Ronan found a tank top, probably clean. ‘It was.’

‘The armour attacked Henry.’

The admission was so abrupt, so startling, that Ronan stopped to stare at him. ‘What?’

His face was blank. Carefully blank. ‘Earlier. One of the suits tried to strangle him.’

Ronan used the majority of his energy not to lunge forward and seize Adam with both hands. ‘One of _his_ suits?’ _Stupid question._ ‘The AI?’

‘Not as far as we could tell.’ Adam said.

‘And you?’ His voice was louder than he meant it to be. Adam had been at Cheng’s, then. The armour… _Christ_.

Adam paused, before he answered. Ronan saw him glance away, momentarily. ‘It was in the spare room.’

_It attacked Henry in Adam’s room?_

Ronan might have done the same.

‘He tried to warn me. There were four of them.’

Four? _In_ the room?

Ronan suspected his expression was conveying enough of his agitation, but that didn’t prevent him from cursing liberally. ‘The _fuck_ , Parrish? What the shit did you two do?’

It wasn’t his business. He didn’t _care_.

But goddamn, if one of them had laid a finger on Adam…

If they’d tried to hurt him, could Adam have stopped them? Of course. Would he have stopped them?

Henry’s armour was too powerful for a human to fight.

‘Cheng?’ Ronan demanded.

‘He’s alright.’ Adam answered. ‘Just bruised.’

‘Parrish.’ Ronan turned away, rubbed his face impatiently. ‘For fuck’s sake.’

‘It might have been hacked. Or the software is corrupted.’ Adam was talking placidly, like Ronan’s irritation was merely humour, but when Ronan swivelled back around, he didn’t look amused. ‘It might have been me.’

His expression stayed unreadable, but Ronan was certain he was measuring the reaction.

He didn’t know what the appropriate response would be. Was there an appropriate response to a comment like that?

The fatigue hit him, but it didn’t seem like the time to drop onto the bed and sleep. He mumbled; ‘Adam.’

‘Dad came back.’ Adam’s voice was strained. ‘I think it’s in my head, but I don’t have any control.’

He looked down, at his hands, but kept muttering; ‘I think the armour came after me because I interfered with Alice, and I think I’m giving Gansey nightmares. I might be making the others hallucinate this crazy shit, and I can’t even tell.’

Only one of Ronan’s overwhelming, muddled feelings was identifiable, and it was unmistakably anger.

‘Opal saw something.’ Adam’s fingers were wrapped around his own wrist, tight enough to bruise, if Ronan knew anything. ‘And whatever it was, I could have caused it.’

It was nearly sunrise. Adam looked pale.

Ronan didn’t know where or how to start, and he was struggling to restrain the urge to throw something across the room.

Not at Adam. Never.

He hadn’t contemplated the possibility that Adam had anything to do with any of it. Kavinsky, or Opal. It hadn’t even occurred to him. Even now, with the grim logic of Adam’s reasoning, the idea was repulsive.

Could he have affected Cheng’s AI? Given _Gansey_ nightmares?

His _father_ …

Ronan didn’t know much about Adam’s father, except that he would have despised the man.

If Adam was being haunted the way Ronan was, or worse, the way Opal was, then his father was a monster.

Not collapsing on the bed had been the right decision, even with fatigue tangling his thoughts. Adam was watching him as warily as a cornered animal, prepared to sprint to safety at any given moment.

He leaned on the wall, let his ass slide down to the floor. He was too tired, for this. Too angry. Infuriated by the thought that Adam blamed himself, dismayed by the awareness that he could be right. Alarmed by the possibility that Kavinsky could be something Adam had put in his head. And on top of everything else, offended, bitter, helplessly resentful that Adam was looking at him like a threat.

Maybe he deserved the distrust. He was angry. Frustrated, too, by the constant instability.

It still hurt, like a half dozen other things at this moment. Opal’s safety, Gansey being afraid, his muscle and skin slowly knitting itself back together. Adam hadn’t told him about his father… so Ronan had nothing to connect Kavinsky’s appearances to. Cheng’s weapons, even if Parrish was the one influencing them, would be a formidable army to confront.

How was Adam going to stop himself from causing this?

If it was him.

It was just a theory, anyway. A miserably plausible theory.

Adam said something else, and Ronan, half-dozing, rolled his head. ‘Hm?’

‘C’mon.’ There was a hand around his arm, another over his hip. Ronan tried to help by forcing himself upright.

The anger was a sidenote. All Ronan wanted was sleep, and fajitas, thoughtlessness, and possibly whisky. Somehow Adam got him back to the bed, and he slouched on the mattress. Healing would be brief, and relatively painless, if he passed out like this. Ideally, he’d wake up and everything would feel less intense and horrific.

’I’m sorry.’ Adam whispered, crouching next to the bed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Stop.’ Ronan hated that tone. He hated this night.

He felt Adam swallow, and that was it.


	11. Like a thunderstorm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the huge delay, hope everyone had good holidays (and had holidays).

Gansey refused to believe it.

Firstly, Adam hadn’t shown any telepathic powers before. His abilities were telekinetic, as far as Gansey understood them.

There had been that strange interplay with the Demon, but Gansey still didn’t know exactly what had happened with that.

There were too many variables, that was the second argument. Distance from Adam, during some of the incidents. Time, and the duration of the hallucinations. Differing manifestations, unique to the individual, and the sheer _extent_ of the influence.

That was the third issue Gansey raised. This wasn’t isolated.

He’d connected at least four events across the city in the past week to sudden, inexplicable delusions, lapses in sanity, nervous breakdowns. There were more, in the preceding weeks, milder issues. Increased crime, increased conflict. Aggression and paranoia, confrontations and disputes.

For every clearly recognisable case there were two or three others, obscurely described, difficult to positively identify.

It wasn’t Adam. Gansey was certain of that.

There was no reason he would cause these incidents, and no link between him and the majority of them. Additionally, from what Gansey had seen in the past, he wouldn’t be able to exercise that level of psychic power without suffering significant side effects.

No, Gansey didn’t think it was him. He didn’t think Ronan would either.

They left for school before Ronan woke up, though, so Gansey couldn’t demonstrate that to Adam.

He’d suggested it to Ronan first, and Gansey could almost understand why. Ronan had probably taken two crossbow bolts as a result of whatever the illness was.

He offered the same explanation to Henry and Gansey afterwards, in the morning, while trying to put his tie on. Gansey had dismissed it, automatically. Henry was still measuring the logic.

None of them had slept particularly well, but they ended up in the Pig anyway, gently and noisily headed towards Aglionby.

‘Was the armour’s behaviour a malfunction, in that case, or a hallucination?’ Henry inquired amiably, from the passenger seat.

Adam was sitting behind Gansey, his voice impressively calm. ‘Both, maybe. If you were hallucinating in isolation, maybe I made what you told me physically happen.’

‘It doesn’t make sense that your mind would make someone hallucinate, and then react to their hallucinations, all beyond your awareness.’ Gansey observed.

’It makes less sense that I would hallucinate, and then the armour would independently malfunction.’ Henry suggested delicately. ‘I do see the possibility that Adam unconsciously called for the armour while asleep as the most likely explanation.’

Adam nodded, his gaze lowered out of sight in the rearview mirror.

‘Why would Alice call it interference?’ Gansey countered. ‘He’s an administrator.’

There was a pause, as Henry considered this.

‘We can’t jump to conclusions.’ Gansey continued, firmly. ‘We don’t even have a clear view of what’s happening across the city.’

 _Civil unrest_ sprang to mind. Gang wars were escalating. Even petty fights were getting worse. The government, most of the police department, and the judiciary remained, to a large degree, corrupt.

Even the traffic was worse.

Gansey pulled into the school carpark, wishing for the thousandth time that Ronan hadn’t abandoned his education entirely.

He couldn’t stay a vigilante for the rest of his life.

The pay was absurd.

‘We need a contingency.’ Adam said, suddenly. ‘If I’m right.’

Gansey’s hand froze on his car keys. ‘What do you mean?’

His face was perfectly impassive. ’What did you do with Leech?’

 

 

 

The bus crashed on Tuesday.

It didn’t just crash, either. It hurtled across the Fothergill bridge, colliding with the bumpers and fenders of more than a dozen other vehicles until it hit a garbage truck and flipped sideways.

It happened too fast for anyone to do anything, but the press release afterwards announced that the driver was a well-liked family man. No history of mental health concerns.

Gansey’s immediate thought was damage control.

Adam had worked on Monday night, but Henry had stayed at Monmouth. His willingness to show Adam the prison was already driving Gansey to distraction, and the new tragedy was only going to make Parrish more determined to see it.

Gansey wouldn’t put him in there, wouldn’t let anyone else put him in there.

God only knew what Ronan would do.

‘A trial.’

The effect was immediate. Adam, insistent, leaning over his desk while Ridderhof was looking at the whiteboard.

Gansey shot a warning look at Henry. ‘No.’

The cells they’d designed for Leech might not even work on him. They might not be powerful enough. They might not target the source of Adam’s powers. They might change nothing, because Adam was doing nothing, or they could change nothing, because the effects were no longer directly linked to him.

Worse, it could work. Gansey couldn’t… he wouldn’t consider it.

Henry thought it was practical. Scientific. He thought it would test Adam’s influence and help them understand the source of his abilities.

It wasn’t a good enough justification for _imprisoning_ Adam Parrish.

Also, there wasn’t a chance they would survive Ronan’s wrath.

He was already angry. At Blue, for talking about Opal. At Henry, for losing control over the suits. At Gansey, for not telling him about the death visions.

At Adam, even if Ronan would clench his teeth and fume and refuse to talk about it. Gansey wasn’t certain, any more, that Ronan would never think Adam was responsible. He didn’t even know if Ronan had experienced any of the symptoms.

Blue hadn’t hesitated in locking up Neeve, but then, there was no love lost between the two of them. Neeve would have sacrificed anything to get the power she wanted.

That was another reason Adam couldn’t go into the prison. According to Pythia and Noah, he was a source of remarkable psychic power, exactly the kind that Neeve was inclined to pursue. Stronger, even.

The system had backups, backups for the backups, failsafes, but sending Adam in was an unnecessary risk.

‘This afternoon.’ Adam added, ignoring Gansey’s indignant expression. ‘Tonight.’

‘God, no.’

Chimera, Greenmantle, and now this? For someone so bright, Parrish was full of extraordinarily bad ideas.

‘It’s getting worse.’ He whispered. ‘Gansey. We have to _try_.’

 

 

 

There were other avenues, other tests. Gansey promised he would let Parrish try the prison… but only after all other possibilities had been exhausted. Brain scans. Blood tests. Whatever it took.

And the last, least palatable option.

Finding out what Adam _was_ , exactly. Finding out if he was capable of this.

Gansey had tried to discover what had happened to Robert Parrish, to no avail. Noah had made him disappear as effectively as Adam had made Chimera disappear.

He’d tried to find Adam’s mother, and he’d gotten close. He had her name, and an old address, in a different city. He hadn’t obtained that through entirely legal methods, and he rather regretted it, now.

Adam was theirs. Family. Gansey wouldn’t yield him to anyone else, and the more he thought about it, the more he felt that Adam’s past was better left in the past. 

He’d lost enough… presumably including his mother. He didn’t need to have it dragged back so he could potentially lose it all again.

The same could be said with regard to Noah, but Gansey would ensure Noah wouldn’t disappear before they tried bringing him back.

Ronan didn’t even look up when they came in after school. Adam had gone home, to study, delaying the argument, and his absence didn’t surprise Ronan. He was deconstructing the gun he’d brought back on Sunday night, carefully removing each piece on the living room table, headphones discouraging any attempt at conversation.

Gansey considered telling him about Adam’s plan. It would spark off more problems, he knew that, but Ronan was easily as stubborn as Adam, and he’d be furiously opposed to locking him up.

But Ronan evidently didn’t want to talk, and they left him undisturbed, at least until Henry came stumbling hurriedly down the hallway after 11.

He hadn’t been asleep, clearly, but propped over a laptop somewhere trying to restrain his own tech. He still looked rumpled and tired.

He narrowly missed running into the edge of the table in his haste. ‘Parrish’s power went out.’

Gansey twisted on the sofa, and despite the headphones, Ronan’s hands went still over the disassembled gun.

‘His apartment?’ He was watching Henry closely. ‘He does that in his sleep.’

Henry shook his head. ‘The _building_.’

Gansey didn’t know where Ronan pulled the webshooters from, but he was at the window in a heartbeat. ‘Watch Opal?’ And he was gone.

 

 

 

The nature of the city was deterioration. Ronan had known that for years. None of this should have come as a surprise.

His temper was never surprising. Adam’s single-mindedness wasn’t surprising.

Getting blindsided, repeatedly, by more bullshit?

Whatever.

It still scared him, every time he thought someone was in trouble. It used to be Gansey, a constant, humming anxiety that he’d dig himself into some hole chasing Chimera and vigilantes through his research. Now it was Adam, the lingering fear that Viridiveste might pursue him, or that the damage from the machine was worse than it seemed, or that a dark room full of assholes would decide he could be a weapon for the country.

They didn’t know about him, Ronan hoped.

Every time something new happened, the fear ratcheted up several notches.

At this point it was getting unbearable.

He landed on Adam’s balcony, feet on the wall, and slipped down. Cheng had the place wired up tight, and he wasn’t wrong. The whole building was a black zone, dead space in the lit-up city.

Even here, fumbling with the balcony key, Ronan could hear people in the nearby apartments groaning and shouting complaints.

There wasn’t any noise inside Adam’s.

He unlocked the door without knocking, pushed it open. There was a reasonable difference in temperature, so the heater had only recently stopped running. He shoved the door closed.

‘Adam.’ There wasn’t much light coming through the narrow door and the squat little window, but Ronan could pick his way around. Books on the table, left open. The bed was still made, roughly speaking.

There was someone breathing, very lightly, almost as though they were asleep.

Nothing on the couch, on the floor in front of the TV. Ronan moved between the counter and the table, peering towards the little shadowed hall to the door.

Maybe Adam was in the bathroom, but it didn’t sound like it.

Ronan reached the end of the table and tripped over him. He was on the floor, just barely tucked under the edge of the table, knees pulled almost to his chin. It startled noise from Ronan’s throat.

Parrish wasn’t moving, hardly breathing. His eyes were open, but he didn’t appear to notice Ronan’s presence. He just stared at the side of his own bed, unseeing, skin dark from his cheek to his chin.

Ronan circled around, touching the edge of the mattress. He knew this look, this state. Caution was essential.

‘Adam.’ He repeated, crouching. ‘Can you hear me?’

The atmosphere in the room was’t oppressive, this time. There was nothing breaking or snapping or flickering. Parrish had just… shut down.

His nose was bleeding, face bruised, but his expression was flat, blank.

There was an unexpected noise, making Ronan flinch. Adam’s phone, vibrating somewhere in the room. He didn’t register it.

‘Wake up.’ Ronan persisted, edging closer. ‘Look at me.’

He reached out, fingertips brushing the sleeve of Adam’s sweater. This close, he could hear Parrish’s heartbeat, low and faintly rapid.

Even Adam’s breath hitching made him jump. The unnerving stillness dissipated, and Adam was alive, again, a faltering, searching entity.

The overhead light flickered on. In a neighbouring apartment, someone yelped gleefully.

‘Ronan.’ Adam leaned forwards, eyes clearing. His pupils were dilated more than Ronan liked, and he was still dazed. He lifted one hand to Ronan’s wrist, and the other to his bloodied face, and immediately tried to stand.

‘Jesus.’ Ronan caught him, helped him straighten. ‘You might have a concussion.’

‘Yeah.’ He answered vaguely. ‘I didn’t think…’

The phone rang again, lighting up on the kitchen bench. Adam leaned on the table.

‘Your old man do this?’ Ronan was holding one of his elbows, the other arm round Adam’s waist. ‘Was he here?’

_Was he alive?_

He wouldn’t be for long.

‘I didn’t think he could touch me.’ Adam confessed. ‘I didn’t _think_.’

He probably had a concussion, or he was in shock. Ronan couldn’t reach the phone, so he webbed it instead.

As far as an explanation went, Henry would just have to wait.

 

 

 

‘They built a prison.’ He said thickly. ‘For Leech. Have you been there?’

Ronan hadn’t. ‘They didn’t build it.’

Adam seemed surprised. ‘Didn’t they?’

He was propped on the sofa, held upright between the cushions and Ronan’s knee. His fingernails were scraping along Ronan’s jeans, thoughtless, instinctive motion.

Taking the electricity out hadn’t damaged him like causing an explosion at VVC, but between that and the concussion he was practically tranquillised.

‘Cheng put the complex in.’ Ronan explained. ‘The prison was already there.’

Parrish looked at him, eyes unsettlingly dark. ‘It’s in the _actual_ prison.’

Ronan had been able to clean his face, but not before Adam had spread some of the blood around with his sleeve, making himself look distinctly gory.

‘It’s in _a_ prison.’ Ronan conceded, suspecting where Adam’s semi-coherent thoughts would lead. ‘It’s not the Veil’s prison.’

Adam blinked, slowly. ‘The Avengers?’

‘The feds.’ Ronan corrected.

Adam paused to consider this. At any other time, Ronan would be certain he’d understand the implications. Right now, he wasn’t sure.

‘They wouldn’t let you leave.’ He said patiently. ‘If they found out why you were there, they’d never let you go. Hell, if they knew what I was, they’d throw me in too.’

‘Would it hold you?’ Adam asked curiously.

Ronan frowned. ‘I don’t want to find out.’

‘I’d go. To stop doing this.’

‘Doing what?’

‘I don’t _know_.’ Adam sounded aggrieved. ‘Messing with everyone’s heads. Making shit happen.’

Ronan closed his eyes, leaned his cheek on the back of the sofa. ‘This isn’t like Viridiveste.’

‘How do you know that?’ He got louder, but only fractionally. ‘People died, because of something I didn’t choose to do. _You_ nearly died. Now it’s just… spreading, like some kind of… like I’m sick.’

Ronan loved him, so badly he sometimes wished he could just take a break from it, catch his breath. ‘You’re not sick.’

‘How-’

‘Viridiveste was reactive. This is different. This isn’t what you are.’ Ronan could feel Adam’s fingers twitching, against his knee. ‘Trust me.’

_Silence._

Ronan opened his eyes.

Adam was looking back at him, bleary-eyed and melancholy. ‘I trust you.’

Even if it was him (and Ronan didn’t think it was) Ronan would take an onslaught of dead Kavinskys and crossbow bolts over losing Parrish. Hell, his father could have six demon heads and chainsaws for hands and it wouldn’t dissuade Ronan.

‘Forget the prison.’

Adam leaned on his leg, sighing softly, and nodded.


	12. Inconceivably unconstitutional, amirite?

His forehead was pressed against Ronan’s spine.

It had to be Ronan, even if Adam didn’t remember him coming over. His skin was eerily pale, but warm, and he smelled pleasantly like Opal’s strawberry body wash.

Adam lifted his chin to kiss Ronan’s back, flinching as his face protested. _Dammit, that hurt_. His ribs, too, where he’d hit the edge of the table.

His father had been here. He vaguely remembered snatches of the lecture, even though he’d tried not to listen.

He hadn’t expected it, that was the stupid part. Despite the movement of the armour, and the debates with Gansey about how dangerous this could be, and the pervasive fear of his father’s presence, he hadn’t expected to be hit.

And then Ronan was there, suddenly, out of the darkness.

Adam must have triggered Henry’s warning systems, but the thought hadn’t occurred to him at the time. Ronan just arrived, like he always did when Adam needed him.

He’d already seen the damage, obviously. Adam could feel the the creeping vengeance of embarrassment. He’d asked about Adam’s father, so he must have drawn conclusions about their relationship, but there was still a chance he wouldn’t care.

Adam wasn’t helpless. He wasn’t a coward. He’d never needed anyone to interfere.

Ronan had saved him often enough, without judgement, without pity. Adam silently pleaded it would extend to this.

He climbed over Ronan and off the bed, wincing. There was dawn light creeping in the window, promising school in a few hours, and he didn’t want an argument.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept… he’d talked to Ronan, for a bit, before they’d gone to bed. He didn’t think he’d been particularly coherent, given that he couldn’t recall precisely what he’d said.

The swelling was up, in the bathroom mirror, but not the colour. Dried blood, around his nose and mouth. He would’ve been a mess when Ronan had found him.

He wished he could remember what he’d done, what he’d said. If he’d talked about his father, or his father’s criticisms. He wouldn’t normally have risked repeating any of it to Ronan. Because it did, essentially, come from Adam’s head, he was presumably accountable for the worst of it.

Robert Parrish had talked about the prison, about Adam endangering the others. He needed to be locked up, to protect them. The longer he let Gansey dodge the issue, the more responsible he was for the disorder spreading through the city.

Ronan had talked about that too, Adam thought. About being taken, or not being taken. About disappearing.

Or Adam had dreamt that.

He did, sometimes. Dream of losing Ronan, or hurting him. Usually both.

The shower water stung his cheek, nose, mouth. The heat, at least, eased some of the ache from his shoulders and stomach.

Ronan said that the Veil’s prison wasn’t run by the Veil, which made sense. Where would they begin? Their only powered prisoner, as far as Adam was aware, had been Leech. It made sense to hand her off to the authorities, with better equipment and infrastructure and funds.

The Avengers must have had some kind of prison… or SHIELD, before it had been revealed and destroyed in a sweeping catastrophe.

Adam had never wanted to consider where all those prisoners must have ended up.

But Leech wasn’t loose, so the prison was probably military. What had Ronan said? Either way, it was a disadvantage. The military or the government wouldn’t accept a brief sojourn to a prison as a casual experiment. If Adam went in, there would have to be an explanation. If there was an explanation, he would probably never get back out.

_Shit._

He balanced on the wall, fingers slipping against the tile.

That was what Ronan had said. If he went, he’d never come back. His life would be over. He’d lose everything.

It had to be worth doing, to protect the others, to protect everyone, but fear still needled at his skin when he thought about it.

_He’d lose Ronan._

Ronan - Adam frowned at the floor - had told him to drop it, but he couldn’t claim that Adam had been thinking clearly. He couldn’t consider _that_ a valid agreement.

He was awake, in the next room. Adam could sense him moving around.

The effects of Greenmantle’s machine had faded to a background hum, usually giving him a good idea of how many people were in the neighbouring apartments, or when to expect a conversation at work. With Ronan it was easier, more obvious. He had predictable patterns, like putting on the television, checking the fridge, or poking Adam’s houseplants. It was really only extended logic that allowed Adam to identify what he was doing at any given point.

_This isn’t what you are._

Ronan didn’t know that. He didn’t always see the facts, where Adam was concerned.

_Forget the prison._

Adam wanted to, badly. He wished he’d never thought of it… but it was still his best plan.

Ronan had found something he liked on the television, or something he disliked. He was motionless in front of it, attentive. Adam wondered if he could get into the kitchen without Ronan looking around.

It didn’t _matter_. Ronan would see his face eventually. He already had.

But it was too humiliating to repeat. _I brought my father back from the dead, and he still hates me_. What a fucking loser.

A thought surfaced, distracting him. He’d have to talk to Ronan about it, and about Opal, too, if he was allowed. He had to try, even if he had no idea if it would help.

He left the shower, pulled his pyjamas back on. He’d changed the night before, too, after Ronan had arrived, and they were bloodless and clean.

Remarkably, Ronan didn’t look around as he left the bathroom, or until he’d made it into the kitchen. The television kept him transfixed. It took Adam a few minutes of self-consciously searching for breakfast materials to realise that Ronan hadn’t found cartoons, or music, or old sit-com reruns. He was watching news stories about impending volcanic eruptions, delayed flights, the costs of childcare.

His attention was inexplicable, until Adam focused long enough to read the flashing banner beneath the newsreader.

It was a list, initially, the names of schools ticking over before the final declaration. _“CLOSED INDEFINITELY”_

Easily a dozen of them, within the boundaries of the city. State schools, only. Aglionby wasn’t on the list, or any other private schools.

‘What happened?’ Adam dropped the cereal box he was holding, hastily bent to pick it up. ‘Ronan?’

‘They’re saying the aggression is uncontrollable.’ Ronan said flatly. ‘They’re shutting people out for the safety of the faculty.’

‘How?’ Dread was climbing his throat. ‘They can’t do that.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Ronan answered sharply. ‘They’ve done it.’

Things would only get worse, from here. More people out of work, trying to manage their kids. More people on the streets, creating conflict.

Ronan turned around, and Adam looked away.

Aglionby was still open, but maybe he shouldn’t go. His face was a lumpy mess, and he was more likely to hurt others in such close proximity.

But nobody at Aglionby connected him with questionable parents, or psychic powers, or potential chaos, so if he just concentrated on the work perhaps it wouldn’t be so dangerous.

Then again, Opal had attacked Ronan while Adam had been at school, and it clearly hadn’t proved itself an effective meditation technique.

Ronan made it into the kitchen, looking for food. Adam mustered his energy and stared forcefully at his cereal.

‘What Opal saw.’ _Don’t hesitate._ Ronan stopped to listen. ‘You know I can’t find out what it was.’

He could guess. He could guess a lot of things. But with Opal, and Ronan, not knowing could make the difference between traumatising them and killing them.

With Ronan… Jesus, he didn’t even want to think about it.

His parents. The Demon. Greenmantle.

Gansey had a point. There was a disconnect between the hallucinations and the physical incidents, because Adam had never considered the possibility of Gansey watching his friends suffer, or Blue seeing Persephone. He’d thought plenty about how to deal with Henry’s suits if the malfunctions were real, or the danger of facing his father in the flesh.

He could only assume that his knowledge of the hallucinations formed the basis for the physical incidents. His father could only hit him because Adam could make the delusion feel real. The suits could only move because Adam could contemplate Alice moving them.

If Ronan had visions of Caedes… God forbid Adam could replicate it.

He shouldn’t be able to. His abilities shouldn’t extend outside the territory of telekinetic violence.

‘Fine.’ Ronan leaned across him for the milk.

Adam stared resolutely at his bowl. ‘And you-’

‘I know.’ He looked at the side of Adam’s face. ‘How’s your head?’

 _Good._ It hurt. _Better_. How bad had it been? _Fine_. Passive aggressive.

’S’alright.’ He cleared his throat, uncomfortably. ‘I was going to message Gansey to pick me up.’

‘Tell him to bring Opal.’

Adam reached for his phone.

What would the teachers think of his bruises? Probably nothing, as before, but Koehn did have him under close scrutiny since Viridiveste.

He could stay here, with Ronan.

The schools were closing. That would cause trouble. Not Ronan’s kind of trouble, but trouble worth avoiding, or preventing, if Adam’s absence proved to be any help.

But if there was trouble, he couldn’t risk missing school while he could still get there. He couldn’t risk missing school while he was still _free_.

His phone hummed, and Ronan had already returned to the sofa, so Adam delivered the message to the back of his head. ‘Blue took Opal to Foxway this morning.’

Ronan nodded. ‘What are you doing after school?’

It took Adam a frighteningly long moment to remember the day, the date, details of his work schedule. ‘Studying.’ It was underhanded, unforgivably manipulative, but he continued anyway; ‘You staying here?’

He could practically feel Ronan measuring his tone, weighing the proportion of encouragement to discouragement. ‘I’ll be here.’

 

 

 

Seven more schools had closed by lunch time. The mayor was calling a press release. Aglionby remained open.

One teacher in a school downtown caught a pair of scissors in the arm, and had to be hospitalised, and that was the least of Ronan’s concerns.

There was a gasoline fire in an office building, a miracle that there were survivors. Cars collided at two intersections, and a truck rolled on the freeway, blocking traffic. One man dangled his coworker from a high-rise window, and a woman started a store-wide fight in the supermarket by throwing her shoes at another shopper.

Ronan did what he could, restless and distracted. The Widower had been downgraded from a public menace to a vaguely convenient source of assistance. The police force never engaged with him, and civilians were generally too agitated by their circumstances or grateful for his help to query his morality.

He tried not to hurt anyone, and routinely failed. Belligerent drivers, normally law-abiding citizens, were difficult to subdue or restrain. Violent hysterics neither requested his help nor appreciated his interventions. More people were carrying weapons than he’d ever expected, despite his familiarity with drug dealers and gang members.

Kavinsky appeared, occasionally, materialising in scenes of chaos like an omen of discord.

He stood in the flames while Ronan searched for people to drag from the fire, and smirked, red-tinted and hazy. _Parrish would self-destruct before giving a fuck about you._

_Your help means jack shit to him. You mean jack shit to him._

_Open your fucking eyes, Lynch._

It needled him, but never enough. Adam was something he’d spent months trying to free himself from, before they’d even met, and nothing had ever worked.

Kavinsky was in the shadows of car wreckages and flickering in the flashing lights of ambulances. _You created a better hell than I ever could._

Adam wanted him at the apartment… it was Ronan’s saving grace. He dragged himself back through the balcony door before school ended, showered, and went out for food.

Between sushi and a documentary about the Galapagos on the television, he was hoping to enforce a safe, comfortable evening, but the second Parrish walked through the door Ronan knew he’d failed.

‘Someone built a bomb in DiGiorgio’s class.’ Adam mumbled, dropping his bag on the floor. ‘They messed it up, but…’

‘You think they’re gonna close the school?’

‘Yeah.’ Adam slumped onto the edge of the sofa, sighing. ‘Friday, if they last that long.’

‘Shit.’

Ronan didn’t care. He didn’t give a damn about the place.

But Adam Parrish, despondently curled on one half of his thin couch, weary and world-worn, was his priority.

‘D’you think we could go?’ Parrish continued, muffled by the sofa cushion. ‘Far enough that it wouldn’t matter?’

Ronan wasn’t sure he’d understood correctly. He hadn’t expected Adam to give up the prison idea, especially since he hadn’t been entirely rational during Ronan’s attempt to dissuade him. ‘Home?’

‘Home.’ Adam repeated, indistinctly. ‘Your home.’

‘Yes.’ Ronan moved to the end of the sofa, close enough to grab Adam’s legs. ‘It’s far enough.’

Adam sat up, slowly, using him as a counterweight. ‘We’ll go, then.’

‘Yes.’

‘And come back when we have a solution.’

‘Yes.’

‘And eat those sushi rolls.’

‘Yes.’

Adam stretched his fingers along either side of Ronan’s neck, digging his nails into the extremely short hair on the back of his head, pressing the heels of his hands against Ronan’s jaw.

‘Lynch.’ His voice dragged at Ronan’s skin.

‘Mm.’ Ronan felt his knees giving out again. Really, he had a _problem_.

Adam straightened, resting on the arm of the sofa, and pulled up the bottom of Ronan’s shirt.

 _No sushi?_ Ronan thought distantly, confusion swiftly forgotten as Adam’s hands scraped his stomach.

‘Ronan.’ It felt like a trap, how effectively Adam’s voice turned his brain to mush. Fingernails were dragging down the length of his back, and he’d almost gotten Parrish’s shirt unbuttoned before he found himself stuck trying to unknot the tie.

Adam had to help, but after a few seconds Ronan could hurl the god-awful thing into a corner, and there were teeth against his throat.

 

 

 

Ronan slept, better than the night before, better than every night for weeks, regardless of injury.

He slept so deeply that waking in the middle of the night brought a wave of adrenaline and anxiety when he realised Adam was gone, and a rush of relief and surprise upon finding him barely four feet away, hunched over on the sofa.

The television was on, some grim spectacle of military force unfolding in a foreign country.

Ronan hadn’t heard him get up, or the television turn on.

They’d showered, eaten, kissed on the couch. Ronan had wondered why there was ever any conceivable problem, when he could be with Adam. Everything else came irrelevant.

Adam had talked about the relative merits of taking the houseplants with them, or asking Blue to water them, and had settled, loyally, on the former.

It was dark outside, and the clouded sky worsened the situation, but Ronan could see Adam’s face by the light of the TV screen.

He stood still, and waited for the next disaster.

_“-announcing the mobilisation of the National Guard to initiate an immediate and complete quarantine of the city and all of its inhabitants. This decision comes after a series of shocking events occurred in the city over the last few weeks, including an unprecedented rise in violent crimes, criminal arrests and charges, and horrific tragedies. Representatives of both political and legal structures within the city have described the rise as the result of a potential “contaminant” afflicting the victims with episodes of psychosis, and have vowed to bring the source of this contaminant to light and provide a treatment for its effects._

_However, after the brutal murder of a lawyer on the steps of the city court today the Governor considers himself obliged to act in the efforts of containment for the protection of the state population. The National Guard has been instructed to seal major ingress and egress routes from the city, and are utilising drone and canine units to patrol the areas between blockades. All citizens have been advised to continue their regular activities while investigations are undertaken within the city._

_The governor has been accused of abandoning the city and playing to the media frenzy surrounding several of the previous incidents reported in recent days and weeks, however his office maintains that the city will remain quarantined and the National Guard will not be dismissed from duty until the source of the illness is identified.”_

Ronan sank onto the sofa. He hardly had the room to sit, but he didn’t need it. Adam’s weight fell on him immediately.

‘They can’t do this.’ Not 24 hours earlier he’d scoffed at Adam’s doubts on the legality of closing state schools, but this? This was insane.

Adam was burying his face somewhere under Ronan’s arm, silent.

Ronan might have said the shock was too much for such a banal, ordinary response as crying, but it was probably just Adam. He’d gone straight to resignation.

He did look like he’d been dragged from the grave.

‘They did it all in the dark.’ He explained softly. ‘To stop people trying to run.’

’That’s unconstitutional.’ Ronan seethed. ‘And bullshit.’

‘D’you think they know what they’re looking for?’

‘No fucking way.’ Ronan curled his arm, squeezing Adam slightly. ‘But neither do we.’


	13. The Widower 4.0

It rained again, drizzle against the window panes in the grey morning light.

The cool air took some of the urgency out of Adam, and they waited for Cheng to pick them up in passive silence. The surprise wore off rapidly for Ronan… he was never far from believing in a dystopian reality just beneath the false surface of the capitalist state.

It just really played into his aesthetic.

Adam didn’t seem particularly shocked, either. His disappointment seemed based in exhaustion rather than idealism.

Ronan wanted to smooth the sleepless bruises from his face, and Adam, remarkably, was willing to let him.

He stayed close, drifting in and out of sleep, until Cheng was knocking briskly at the door.

Ronan got up to let him in, leaving Parrish half curled on the couch in front of cartoons. The stations were still running regular television, despite the banner at the bottom of every channel declaring a military state situation and the degradation of their human rights.

Cheng wandered inside, looking considerably less troubled than Ronan expected.

‘What’s got you so fucking cheery?’

‘The collapse of the free world. Also, waffles.’ He ducked his head, lowering a bag of stacked containers onto the floor in front of the sofa.

Ronan saw Parrish’s fine eyebrows lift with mild scorn, and fall as he registered the availability of waffles.

He reached for the bag without hesitation.

‘Didn’t you see this coming?’ Ronan scowled, without bothering to restrain his accusing tone.

‘Of course.’ Henry shrugged. ‘However, I doubted there was any likelihood of preventing it.’

‘Gansey’s parents are going to lose their shit.’

‘Indeed. In fact, I gather his mother has already demanded his release.’ Henry raised an eyebrow provocatively.

‘It would break quarantine.’ Adam commented morbidly, before crunching into a waffle the size of a hardcover book.

‘Absolutely, but doubtless others escaped before the quarantine was placed. They couldn’t confine everyone.’

‘You’re buying this contamination story?’ Ronan was startled in spite of himself.

‘Consider their perspective.’ Henry advised sagely. ‘Widespread, seemingly random occurrences, acts of aggression, symptoms of psychosis. What would you think?’

‘Drugs.’ Ronan answered swiftly.

‘Chemical contaminants.’ Adam leaned forward, intrigued. ‘Rather than simple hallucinogens.’

‘Precisely.’ Henry assumed a demeanour of knowing serenity.

Ronan watched them for a moment, before exasperation won out and he kicked a chair impatiently. ‘A contaminant, nerds.’

Henry didn’t disguise his amusement. ‘Left your biochemistry days behind you, Lynch?’

Ronan growled. ‘It’s too random. The exposure source would have given us a pattern to trace. Unless…’ He frowned pointedly at Adam.

‘Other variables.’ Adam suggested, inching forwards. ‘Susceptibility? Environmental changes? Protective clothing?’

‘There’d still be a common factor.’ Ronan muttered. ‘Some interaction within a location, or with an object.’

Cheng’s phone chirped, and he answered it with as much dignity as he could summon around a mouthful of waffle. ‘Fearless leader!’ His cheeriness vanished. ‘What kind of situation?’

Ronan could hear Gansey’s voice, small and startlingly high-pitched through the phone. He felt Henry’s eyes focus on him, and lunged for his suit.

‘Is the threat to civilians that severe?’ Henry asked sharply. ‘Military?’

Ronan stripped off his jeans and dragged on the suit as Adam shifted uneasily on the sofa.

‘It’s close to us.’ Henry told Gansey. ‘We can go.’

He raised a hand to stall Ronan’s movement. The television continued flickering behind his shoulder, colours disconcertingly bright.

‘It may be necessary, nevertheless.’

Ronan tightened the suit to his skin, but Adam snatched his wrist.

‘The National Guard, Ronan.’ His fingernails were digging into fabric, but his expression was unreadable. His eyes were muddy blue, this morning, and the slash of red across the bridge of his nose was strangely distinct.

‘I won’t get caught.’ Ronan assured him. ‘Cheng, where?’

‘The Somersly Stadium. They’ve got a helicopter in the air. I’m not sure it’s advisable that you go alone-’

’Can’t wait.’ Ronan grabbed his mask, kissed Adam’s jaw, went for the balcony.

 

It was bright enough to be seen, launching off Parrish’s balcony wall, but the rain and the smudgy sky made it unlikely anyone would be looking.

He fired a web to a nearby building, higher than Adam’s apartment, and jumped. He wanted to go higher - the cold rain made him feel alive - and he wanted to fall. He loved the sensation, the weightlessness. Skydiving had always been a dream, because he could fall for longer, in the broad, spacious countryside. In the silence.

He thought it must have been something to do with Niall, and what he’d taught them. He’d always said that the risk was the important part.

Being close to death, in Niall’s opinion, was the same as being close to God.

Maybe that was why Aurora had let him train her children to fight.

Somersly was close to Adam’s, or closer at least than Foxway, where Gansey presumably was. Ronan could feel the surge of energy heading in that direction. Cops, he figured. A lot of them, coming from every nearby precinct.

If the military were taking out civilians, it was more than likely the police department would oppose them. It’d be a bloodbath.

The cops had been trapped here too, imprisoned by the government to which they’d sworn allegiance. They had families inside the boundary, homes, possessions, friends. They wouldn’t lay down without a fight and they sure as hell wouldn’t join forces with the Guard.

He could hear the chopper, or feel the vibration of it thrumming through the air. The sound of raindrops landing everywhere, metal and plastic, concrete and asphalt, a blanket of noise. Sirens.

Gunfire.

It already sounded ugly, and it worsened the closer he got, but he never expected to swing onto Fitzgerald and find the block completely wrecked.

The facades of several buildings had been entirely pulverised by bullet spray… artillery. A once-hopeful office building, all glass, was practically a windowless shell. Vehicles on the road were riddled with holes, flames gently consuming their interiors, and street signs had been inadvertently transformed into plate-shaped colanders.

There were already police cars, most of them stuck behind debris, lights spinning sickeningly across the view.

Ronan ran onwards, leapt from one building to the next, until the giant metal and glass fishbowl of the stadium rose up in front of him, begging to be scaled.

So far, he hadn’t seen any injured. There was no sign of whatever had kicked the conflict off, be it civilian protestors, or police squads, or military targets. There was a lot of motion around the base of the stadium, blockades in front of the entrances, police teams moving into position.

Ronan jumped for the fishbowl, landed with both hands pressed against the windows and his toes bent to keep him clinging on, but he still had to climb for the top.

The sudden crackle of static in his mask startled him, and he slipped a couple feet down the glass.

‘Lynch-’

‘Fuck, Cheng, _what_?’

‘The pilot… rogue.’ Cheng said rapidly, muffled by the rain and the rumble of the helicopter and interference.

‘What?’

‘Pilot… affected… engage…’

‘What?’

He was moving, Ronan thought. His voice was loud, but there was substantial, infuriating background noise.

Ronan reached a light fixture, and scrambled under the overhang to reduce the sound of rain. ‘Say again, Henry.’

‘The pilot is affected.’ Cheng repeated. ‘The helicopter is stolen.’

_Stolen? Who would steal a helicopter?_

Ronan swung out of the fixture, continued to scramble upwards, cursing the slippery surface of the building.

‘…heavily armed…’ Cheng was explaining. ‘… subdue… convoy…’

_Fuck knows._

He reached the top of the wall, climbed delicately over the curve to avoid falling from the overhang onto the stands below, and spotted the helicopter.

It was a military helicopter. Presumably, it was a military pilot, because his piloting skills seemed fairly impressive. He had the bird hovering towards the centre of the green, twenty feet up, head-to-head with three police cars a few hundred metres in front.

The police, the size of figurines from where Ronan was crouching, had opened their doors, and were taking cover behind them, weapons drawn, like a classic showdown.

It was the stupidest thing Ronan had ever seen.

The helicopter had a machine gun turret mounted on either side of the cockpit, and Ronan had passed clear evidence that they were loaded. Ideally, there wouldn’t be any ammunition left, but Ronan was grimly conscious of the fact that he didn’t live in an ideal world.

The small figures would die, without his intervention.

If he intervened, _he’d_ probably die.

The police had come to bring down the chopper, but the military would be en route, far more heavily armed. Either one group or both were aware that the pilot wasn’t in his right mind, but would it stop them killing him, to put an end to the rampage?

Ronan lifted himself onto his feet, balancing carefully, and sprinted towards the edge of the overhang.

The landing was harsh. He hit the turf and rolled, cursing his splintering ankles, straightened up and kept running. The only thing that seemed to have kept the pilot from shooting was his access to some PA system aboard the helicopter, through which he was shouting fairly detailed accusations about the city harbouring infectious entities and the imminent collapse of the global economy.

It wouldn’t have sounded at all inaccurate if he hadn’t been referring to zombies.

Ronan ran until his throat burned. He was fast, but so rarely fast enough that he was surprised to reach webbing distance before the firing started.

He shot two webs, the strongest he could use, tried to aim them as high as possible. There was a tower of metal below the rotor, and he hit that, briefly considered back-pedalling, and decided to keep running. He shot straight past the police cars, a good fifty, hundred yards in front of them, and kept going.

It took a moment for his sprint to pull the webs to full tension, and suddenly dragging the force of the helicopter brought him to a dead stop. The chopper moved, though, tipping sideways, and when the machine guns went off the bullets tore almost perfectly between the cars and Ronan, and struck a section of the empty stands instead, demolishing plastic chairs like cardboard.

‘Fall back.’ There was Cheng, again, unexpectedly clear in his eardrum.

‘Five minutes-’ That was Gansey, somehow, suddenly within range of their comms. ‘- we’re stuck.’

‘It’s a death-trap, pull back-’

‘Fleeing isn’t an option right now, Cheng.’ Ronan grunted, forcing his heels into the dirt and yanking at the webs.

‘Henry.’ Gansey’s voice took a couple octaves in panic. ‘The suit. In the back of the car.’

‘I can’t.’ Henry’s voice was calm, detached. ‘It won’t work.’

‘We’re not moving.’ Sargent, somewhere, growling. And then, aside; ‘I swear I will rip the doors off his car if he doesn’t get his ass-’

‘You’ve got to try the suit.’ Gansey was pleading.

‘Two more helicopters, from the south.’ Henry noted. ‘You’re pinned in. You have to get out before they take the airspace.’

Ronan hissed, wrapping the webs around his arms, dragging the nose of the helicopter down in painfully small increments. ‘There are _people_ in here.’

The gun went off again, bullets striking the barriers and the turf, throwing clumps of dirt and coloured plastic into the air. Whatever else said on comms was inaudible.

He wasn’t sure if the police had stayed, or if they’d run. There was very little he could do to warn them about the incoming shitstorm, so he hoped they’d run.

The pilot would be killed, for sure… another casualty of this fucking sickness, and he probably wasn’t even from the city.

Abruptly, the helicopter tipped up, tried to rise, and Ronan lost traction on the ground, slipping and stumbling forwards. He couldn’t plant his feet, and without the leverage, he couldn’t control the chopper.

He cut the webs before they could drag him too far off the ground, and landed in a crouch, grimacing. _Motherfucker_. His arms were bruised, probably scraped bloody even through the suit, but he was out in the middle of nowhere without cover.

He was reluctantly relieved when Ironbee landed on the oval between the helicopter and him.

_Thank fuck, Henry._

Of course, this was a pretty serious nightmare if the armour was actually off playing by itself again, but Ronan had more faith in Gansey’s persuasive abilities than he liked to admit.

The helicopter was rocking gently, trying to steady itself, but Cheng didn’t move. He hadn’t even raised his arms.

Even Henry’s suit wouldn’t withstand the armour-piercing bullets Ronan was pretty sure the helicopter was packing. Maybe he’d lost control upon landing. Maybe the suit wouldn’t follow commands to defend him. Maybe he’d gotten himself killed trying to drag Ronan’s ass out of the fire.

Ronan started towards him, just as the helicopter straightened up.

_‘Cheng!’_

The pilot opened fire, and Ronan instinctively tried to web the turrets while sinking low to the ground.

His webs didn’t land… neither did the bullets. Ronan could hear the chatter of the gunfire (he couldn’t hear anything else) and he thought he could see the bullets whipping out into the air, but they didn’t strike anything - not Ironbee, motionless in the line of fire, or Ronan, or the dirt, or the stands behind them. They sang eight or nine feet through the ether and vanished, dissipating into nothingness, like they were being absorbed into an invisible wall of jelly.

Ronan didn’t stand up. Balancing on his toes and his fingertips, he leaned forwards. _‘Adam?’_

Ironbee didn’t react. Ronan pushed himself upright, edgy as all hell. He could hear the other helicopters, close on the border of the stadium. He needed out, and he needed this… Cheng, Parrish, whatever… out too.

With a whine and an unpleasantly violent tilt the helicopter pitched sideways, and the tail swung round, savagely slicing the air.

The vanishing trick was spreading, the blades being eaten away from the ends inwards, throwing the helicopter into uncontrolled motion. It swung randomly, tipped and jerked, and nearly slammed side-down into the grass, before striking one wheel hard into the earth and skidding to an undignified halt. The blades were all but gone, the guns were clunking along without ammo, and the helicopter was effectively paralysed.

Ironbee raised an open palm to the helicopter.

‘Wait!’ Ronan threw out a web, catching the wrist of the armour and pulling hard enough to drag the arm around. The energy blast soared past on his left, and scorched a patch of ground a couple feet away. The helmet turned, blank mask facing Ronan. ‘He’s infected. Not a target.’

There was no sign of understanding, or even recognition.

The armour lowered its arm.

With a burst of speed it charged at Ronan, and he braced reflexively, expecting the impact.

It hit his waist, mostly, ducking low, and lifted him straight off the ground.

 

The flight was choppy. The suit thrusters kicked in and out - never all of them operating simultaneously - and the steering was seriously dubious, but there were plenty of places on the armour where Ronan could curl his fingers and hold on and pray they didn’t crash.

It was a long trip. They were practically on the other side of the city before Ironbee even slowed down.

The arm released his waist, and Ronan snatched at the wrist, lowered and finally dropped onto the rooftop of an old cinema downtown. He landed and rolled into a crouch, as the suit unceremoniously struck the ground several metres away and toppled over.

Ronan reached it a second later, sliding onto his knees, and grabbed the helmet.

The armoured hands tried to remove it, failed to work, gave up. Ronan twisted until the damn thing clicked off.

_Adam Adam Adam…_

His hair was sticking to his skin, from rain or sweat, and his eyes were significantly more blue than Ronan had noticed earlier, wide and alarmed.

‘Hated that.’ He reported, tipping into Ronan’s shoulder. ‘Hate that. Hated it.’

Flying, Ronan realised. He pulled his own mask off, pressed his mouth to Adam’s burning skin. He was shivering, despite the heat, despite the armour.

‘Never again.’ Adam spread both hands, the armour humming in acquiescence. ‘Never.’

He was breathing against Ronan’s collarbone, slow, heavy breaths.

‘Parrish.’ Ronan held his jaw with both hands, didn’t move him. He couldn’t tell if there was blood through the gloves.

‘Yeah?’ Adam didn’t move either.

‘What the fuck?’


	14. I need to study, so I wrote this instead

He felt weightless. He didn’t know why. It might have been the adrenaline, from the flight. Might have been exhaustion, from destroying the helicopter. It might have been awe, finding Ronan fearless in the face of danger.

The conversation with Henry hummed at the back of his thoughts. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t considered alternative causes for the wave of madness sweeping across the city, but he’d already been convinced he was the source. A hallucinogen entering the water mains or the food chain would be relatively easy to track. Someone deploying drugs at different locations would have created target zones. It was all fairly implausible.

But a chemical contaminant - a toxin that could adhere to surfaces, such as subway station platforms, car door handles, grocery store trolleys - would potentially only affect the first person to come into direct contact with it. The spread would be mediated by degree of exposure, clothing, immune responses, personal hygiene. Adam could see it was a possibility.

They stayed sitting on the rooftop for a while. Adam pondered his strange, disjointed memories of the stadium. He remembered putting the suit on. That had been a choice. He remembered it launching, and a few moments of panic before darkness. An image of the Widower, clad in black head-to-toe, against the bright green grass, and Adam’s fully conscious recognition that the chopper swinging wildly in front of him was going to open fire. The landing - his panic gone - and the _fury_.

Lynch wore a wolfish smirk above the light-consuming blackness of his suit, sharp teeth and sharp eyes. Unharmed.

Adam had done something right, for a change.

When the car arrived, Ronan dropped the helmet into Adam’s outstretched arms and levered him upright. One eyebrow lifted in a challenge. ‘Fire escape?’

They stripped off in the tiny alley next to the cinema, Adam awkwardly shedding chunks of metal, and Ronan having to go right down to his underwear, but Gansey had parked with two wheels on the sidewalk and it was a hasty sprint to bundle themselves and their gear into the backseat. Blue grumbled as Ironbee segments tumbled across the seats and into the footwells, but didn’t manage more than a grimace when a considerable amount of Ronan’s bare skin appeared within her view.

‘What the hell happened?’ Gansey had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, and they departed the sidewalk accompanied by the squeal of rubber.

Ronan grinned. ‘Parrish demolished a helicopter.’

Unusually quiet in the passenger seat, Henry allowed himself an impressed glance.

‘With the suit?’ Blue queried.

‘With his miiiiiiind.’ Ronan answered theatrically. ‘Like a fucking sorcerer.’

Adam, wincing, pressed his weight against Ronan’s shoulder to give Blue some breathing room. The Audi was barely equipped for any backseat passengers at all, let alone three of them plus a disassembled fourth.

Gansey drove them straight to back to Foxway, and straight into Henry’s basement. Mental fatigue, compounded by the exhaustion of a restless night, brought Adam to the point of dozing, but he couldn’t quite allow it in such close proximity to the others. He faced the stairs up to the living room with uneasiness rather than outright fear, even moving along the hall, still damaged in places by the scuffle, with only a moment’s hesitation.

It helped that Ronan was right behind him.

‘Does it make a difference?’ Gansey’s voice, low and gentle, still cleared the fog inside his skull as he settled onto the sofa cushions. Ronan slumped onto the seat next to him, and easily lifted Adam’s legs into his lap. He didn’t let himself blush over it, but Adam could see the way he lifted his chin, silently, unnecessarily defiant.

‘It could be testable.’ Henry answered, just out of sight as he entered the room. Blue landed in one of the armchairs with a sigh, possibly directed at Ronan’s semi-nakedness in her house.

‘A blood test?’ Gansey asked. ‘They’ve been inconclusive so far.’

‘They have.’ Henry admitted. ‘However, I am under the impression that the results can be misleading when you are searching for a specific cause.’

‘You mean if they’re looking for drugs and miss toxins.’ Gansey concluded.

‘Or if they’re looking for blood poisoning and they don’t analyse body load.’ Ronan interjected, his chest vibrating soothingly against Adam’s shins. ‘Or if it’s viral, not poisoning.’

‘How would it be viral?’ Blue asked sharply.

Ronan shrugged. ‘Syphilis causes psychosis.’

There was a moment of silence as the room digested this curiously specific piece of information. Adam swallowed a tired giggle.

‘So how do we defeat a virus?’ Gansey inquired.

‘Vaccine?’ Henry suggested.

‘Vaccination won’t work on people who are already infected.’ Ronan explained, head dropping to the back of the sofa in thought. ‘An antiviral compound, _might_ , but we don’t know what it is… or if it’s even a virus.’

‘Could be bacteria.’ Adam murmured, sleepily.

Blue sighed again.

‘Assuming it’s viral,’ Adam continued, wondering if Ronan’s hand was too far to reach for. ‘It’s going to be unique. There won’t be an existing treatment… and there won’t be enough time to research and produce one before this spreads.’

‘Hang on.’ Blue said firmly. ‘Drugs, toxins, viruses and bacteria have all been options up until now?’ She didn’t disguise her irritation. ‘Why exactly have we all been behaving like it’s the end of the world?’

Ronan snorted, amused, but when nobody answered she muttered; ‘Drama queens.’

Adam was still dangerous, everyone knew that, and the creations of their own minds were probably all as embarrassing as they were terrifying, but she did have a point. Honesty would have enabled them to begin searching for the cause and for an appropriate defence much faster.

But Adam was still afraid to mention his father. He still had the bruises, from the encounter, even if he didn’t have the energy to be immediately concerned about them. And Ronan… God, there were so many things Ronan wouldn’t want to talk about.

If he was seeing things, which Adam didn’t know for sure.

It was unlikely that, of the six of them, Ronan would be the only one spared.

The faintest warmth of comprehension crept through Adam’s brain, but his eyes were closed, the fog was spreading, and he wanted the heavy, comforting peace of sleep.

 

 

 

Ronan didn’t risk trying to find clothing in the dark, scary recesses of the Foxway building. After Adam fell asleep and the discussion slowly died out, the others gradually left to pursue their own activities and suspicions. Ronan dug himself into the sofa, carefully moving Adam, and pulled down a blanket to loosely cover both of them. It was barely noon, judging by the orange tinted light that made it through the thick curtains pulled over the windows, but it was worth lying still to be near Parrish for a little longer.

It was all something of a relief, really. The unusually positive outcome to the fight, Adam’s tranquillity in the wake of the confrontation, and finally, obtaining a reasonable explanation for whatever was affecting them.

Ronan wagered on the viral explanation. Cheng’s suggestion of chemical contamination was fair, but toxins with the strength to do this much damage would have identical effects for each individual exposed. Viral effects changed according to immune systems, rate, quantity and quality of exposure, mutation and adaptation.

The answer, as Sargent had so scathingly highlighted, was self-focus. Who had done the damage to _them_? The rest of the population was inconsistently affected, but not their team.

 _Team?_ Ronan mentally slapped himself.

The point was, it must have been targeted. And Ronan knew of one (1) megalomaniac bastard with the resources and moral degeneracy to weaponise a virus.

Adam sighed, unmoving, and it startled Ronan when he spoke.

‘Does it hurt you?’

‘What?’

He didn’t stir. It didn’t even look as though his eyes were open.

‘Does it hurt you?’ He repeated, muffled against Ronan’s shoulder. ‘Having to face this every day?’

Ronan’s arm was already around Parrish’s waist. He didn’t know where to go from there, so he didn’t move. ‘Yes.’

‘Why do you do it?’

‘I don’t have a choice.’ He didn’t know exactly what Adam meant, but the answer, across the board, was roughly equivalent. Loss of parents? _Check._ Superhuman abilities? _Check._ Apparent moral obligation to protect idiots? _Check._

‘With me.’ Adam clarified, sluggishly.

Obsession with Adam Parrish? _Fucking check._

‘No choice, Parrish.’

Adam’s answer, almost indecipherable, came slowly. ‘That’s crap.’

Ronan snorted involuntarily. ‘It’s a choice, to you?’

He wouldn’t care. He _didn’t_ care. He’d never expected this, would never expect Adam to feel the same way he felt. It might not be possible.

‘Yes.’ Adam pushed himself up, onto both arms, and stayed there, looking vacantly down at Ronan’s face. ‘I’d always _choose_ you.’

Ronan blushed into the gloom, smothered his pleasure with snideness. ‘If you’d always _choose_ me then it’s not much of a _choice_ , is it?’ He couldn’t claim to have fully understood Adam’s meaning, but he felt weakened just by the statement, the blatant admission of Parrish’s favour.

Adam, after a pause, muttered; ‘Shut up.’

Ronan smirked, silent, gleeful.

‘And to your mind, you’re just stuck with me.’ Adam analysed grimly, trying and failing to sit up. ‘Without a choice.’

_You possess my mind. You inhabit every thought I have and every action I ever take. I live for you._

‘Would you leave, if I asked you to?’

Ronan refused to let the question steal his smug glory. ‘Nope.’ He turned his gaze away from Adam’s expression, towards the window. ‘Stop talking shit.’

‘Ronan, I-’ Adam stopped, struggled to speak.

‘I thought we’d decided on a contaminant.’ Ronan interjected, forcibly. ‘Isn’t that the best theory?’

‘Contamination.’ Adam’s expression changed, with recognition, with the shadow of thoughtfulness. ‘That doesn’t change what I’m doing with people’s nightmares.’

‘Not mine.’

‘Not yet.’

Ronan rolled his eyes, jerked his arm enough to drag Adam closer. ‘You’re so fucking dramatic.’

‘Ronan.’ His chin dug into Ronan’s breastbone. ‘If you hallucinated something, and I made it real, how bad would it be?’

Potentially fucking awful, but it hadn’t happened. Parrish didn’t even know half the twisted shit that was coming out of Ronan’s head. He probably couldn’t even guess that out of all the unpleasant parts of Ronan’s past, it would be Joseph Kavinsky that had come back to haunt him.

And Ronan had no interest in sharing that information.

‘Does it matter?’ It had definitely been a rhetorical question, but Ronan was annoyed. He added sarcastically; ‘Believe it or not, I’m not having a psychotic breakdown every time I’m in a room with you.’

Adam made a small, equally sarcastic noise of amusement. ‘Are you suggesting we’re stronger together?’

‘Ew.’ Ronan tipped him off the sofa, and heard Adam land on the floor with thud and a satisfying _oof_.

He didn’t even reappear, but Ronan could hear him laughing. ‘You _prick_.’

‘You stopped the military turning my ass into A-grade mince today.’ Ronan pointed out, stretching out to occupy all of the available space on the sofa. ‘So maybe leaving you behind _is_ a mistake.’

‘That’s real romantic, Lynch. You should write poetry.’ Adam responded, from the floor.

‘Shut the fuck up.’

Parrish sat up. ‘What about Opal?’

Ronan winced. ‘I never should have left her either.’

‘You think company prevents hallucinations?’

‘Has so far.’ He hadn’t seen Kavinsky unless he’d been on his own in the suit, or in the car, at Monmouth, or at Parrish’s. He’d been interrupted and the delusion had lingered, but the little fucker only materialised when Ronan was alone. Even Opal seemed fine when she stayed in the presence of Foxway women.

Adam had been by himself when he’d encountered his father…

He’d quirked an eyebrow, contemplating this suggestion and the evidence of his own experience. ‘Perhaps solitude makes us more vulnerable to psychoses.’

‘Mm-hm.’ Ronan mumbled dismissively.

‘Have you talked to Declan?’

That took Ronan by surprise. He cracked his eyelids and glared across at Parrish. ‘Fuck, no.’

He’d called, several times since the quarantine news had filtered through the media. Ronan had ignored the phone, when he’d been with Adam at the apartment, and he’d left it behind when he’d headed out after the chopper. It didn’t promise a productive conversation, just Declan winding up about what a shitfight Ronan had gotten himself caught in, and the new, different barrier between him and Declan and Matthew.

‘He called me, too.’ Adam explained. He didn’t point out the obvious - that Declan shouldn’t have had his number, that obviously he was worried, that Ronan was being petulant - but he didn’t disguise his curiosity. ‘I feel I should at least call him back.’

Ronan groaned and sat up. The last thing he needed was Declan subjecting Parrish to his omniscient-yet-somehow-still-paranoid aggression. ‘I’ll fucking do it.’

It was a physical effort, to make himself press the green dial button on Adam’s phone.

He just didn’t want to talk. On the phone. To Declan. About _these things_.

‘Parrish?’ Declan answered, immediately followed by a sigh. ‘Ronan.’

’S’up?’ Ronan hoped Declan could sense his eyes rolling. Next to him, Adam leaned forward, dropping his chin to Ronan’s ribs, perhaps to prevent him from getting up and bailing.

‘You’re still alive, then.’ Declan said flatly. ‘That stunt with the helicopter was on the news.’

Ronan raised his eyebrows at Adam, who blankly stared back.

‘And I’m thrilled to be here.’

‘What the fuck is going on over there?’ His brother sounded tired, and aggravated, but… that was the only way he ever sounded. ‘Psychosis, contamination, are you all goddamn high?’

‘We haven’t ruled it out.’ Ronan answered lightly.

‘What is it?’ The sound muffled, like Declan was running a hand over his face. ‘A telepath? Is it Parrish?’

The abruptness of Declan’s accusation made Ronan’s answer die in his throat. He lifted his eyes off Adam and looked at the ceiling instead, breathing out; ‘You fucking asshole.’

Adam moved, either because he’d understood the subject or because he was apprehensive of Ronan’s temper. He retreated into the shadows of the room.

‘Get over it.’ Declan ordered. ‘Are you doing anything _about_ it?’

Every instinct in Ronan’s body was demanding that he hang up, or swear, or break something, but he didn’t. Declan’s question struck him as uncharacteristic. As if Declan would ever consider Ronan capable of fixing problems. He’d never expected Ronan to survive the Demon, and he sure as hell wouldn’t expect Ronan to be able to stop Adam.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Ronan hissed. For his own satisfaction, he added; ‘You piece of shit?’

‘Whatever it is.’ Declan responded, his voice strained. ‘You’d better fucking sort it out.’

This wasn’t about Adam. It wasn’t even about Ronan.

This was about _him_.

Ronan sat up quick enough for his head to spin. ‘What did you see?’

He could probably figure it out. Declan’s only weaknesses were narcissism and Matthew. Matthew was the thing he’d be most afraid of losing, after himself. Unless he was hallucinating that he was walking into traffic, or assassins, his fears were easy to predict.

‘I swear to God, Ronan…’ Declan trailed off, and Ronan’s hatred for the quarantine rose sharp and unbidden to the forefront of his attention.

Declan cut the call.


End file.
